276 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES xvm 



may have been, has in the course of ages divaricated into 

 three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of Europe, 

 the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that 

 all existing individuals of the species can be ranged around 

 these types, or somewhere or other between them. Large 

 numbers are doubtless the descendants of direct crosses in 

 varying proportions between well-established extreme forms ; 

 for, notwithstanding opposite views formerly held by some 

 authors on this subject, there is now abundant evidence of the 

 wholesale production of new races in this way. Others may 

 be the descendants of the primitive stock, before the strongly 

 marked existing distinctions had taken place, and therefore 

 present, though from a different cause from the last, equally 

 generalised characters. In these cases it can only be by most 

 carefully examining and balancing all characters, however 

 minute, and finding out in what direction the preponderance 

 lies, that a place can be assigned to them. It cannot be too 

 often insisted on that the various groups of mankind, owing 

 to their probable unity of origin, the great variability of 

 individuals, and the possibility of all degrees of intermixture 

 of races at remote or recent periods of the history of the species, 

 have so much in common that it is extremely difficult to find 

 distinctive characters capable of strict definition, by which they 

 may be differentiated. It is more by the preponderance of 

 certain characters in a large number of members of a group, 

 than by the exclusive or even constant possession of these 

 characters, in each of its members, that the group as a whole 

 must be characterised. 



Bearing these principles in mind, we may endeavour to 

 formulate, as far as they have as yet been worked out, the 

 distinctive features of the typical members of the three great 

 divisions, and then show into what subordinate groups each 

 of them seems to be divided. 



To begin with the Ethiopian, Negroid or Melanian, or 

 " black " type. It is characterised by a dark, often nearly 

 black, complexion ; black hair, of a kind called " frizzly " or, 

 incorrectly, " woolly," i.e., each hair is closely rolled up upon 

 itself, a condition always associated with a more or less 

 flattened or elliptical transverse section ; a moderate or scanty 



