2 26 VESTIGES OF THE 



their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to 

 be very active, altlioiigli the higher intellect may be dor- 

 mant. If we therefore presume India to have been the 

 cradle of our race, they might at first exemplify a sort of 

 golden age ; but it could not be of long continuance. 

 The very first movements from the primal seat would be 

 attended with degradation, nor could there be any ten- 

 dency to true civilisation till groups had settled and 

 thickened in particular seats physically limited. 



The probability may now be assumed that the human 

 race sprung from one stock, which was at first in a state 

 of simplicity, if not barbarism. As yet we liave not seen 

 very distinctly how the various branches of the family, 

 as they parted ofi*, and took up separate ground, became 

 marked by external features so peculiar. AVhy are the 

 Africans black, and generally marked by coarse features 

 and ungainly forms % "Why are the Mongolians generally 

 yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians w^hite ? Why 

 the flat features of the Chinese, the small stature of the 

 Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the lank 

 features of their descendants, the Americans ? All of 

 these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on 

 the ground of developiunit . We have already seen that 

 various leading animal forms represent stages in the 

 embryotic progress of the highest — the human being. 

 Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, a 

 reptile's, and a mammifer's brain, and finally l)eoomes 

 human. There is more than this, for, after completing the 

 animal transformations, it passes through the characters 

 in which it appears in the Negro, IMalay, American, and 

 Mongolian nations, and finally is Caucasian. The face 

 partakes of these alterations. " One of the earliest 

 points in which ossification commences is the lower jaw. 

 This bone is consequently sooner completed than the 



