286 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES xvin 



typical Asiatic Mongol, in many other respects they resemble 

 them so much that, although admitting the difficulties of the 

 case, I am inclined to include them as aberrant members of 

 the Mongolian type. It is, however, quite open to any one 

 adopting the Negro, Mongolian, and Caucasian as primary 

 divisions to place the Americans apart as a fourth. 



Now that the high antiquity of man in America, perhaps 

 as high as that which he has in Europe, has been discovered, 

 the puzzling problem, from which part of the Old "World the 

 people of America have sprung has lost its significance. It is 

 quite as likely that the people of Asia may have been derived 

 from America as the reverse. However this may be, the 

 population of America had been, before the time of Columbus, 

 practically isolated from the rest of the world, except at the 

 extreme north. Such visits as those of the early Norsemen 

 to the coasts of Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia, or the 

 possible accidental stranding of a canoe containing survivors of 

 a voyage across the Pacific or the Atlantic, can have had no 

 appreciable effect upon the characteristics of the people. It is 

 difficult, therefore, to look upon the anomalous and special 

 characters of the American people as the effects of crossing, as 

 was suggested in the case of the Australians, a consideration 

 which gives more weight to the view of treating them as a 

 distinct primary division. 



III. The Caucasian, or white division, according to my 

 view, includes the two groups called by Professor Huxley 

 Xanthochroi and Melanochroi, which, though differing in 

 colour of eyes and hair, agree so closely in all other 

 anatomical characters, as far, at all events, as has at 

 present been demonstrated, that it seems preferable to 

 consider them as modifications of one great type than as 

 primary divisions of the species. Whatever their origin, they 

 are now intimately blended, though in different proportions, 

 throughout the whole of the region of the earth they inhabit ; 

 and it is to the rapid extension of both branches of this race 

 that the great changes now taking place in the ethnology of 

 the world are mainly due. 



A. The Xanthochroi, or blon4e type, with fair hair, eyes, 

 and complexion, chiefly inhabit Northern Europe Scandinavia, 



