GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 11 



produced by crossing, migrations, and conquests, and with the 

 certainty that several races, or a great number of them, have 

 disappeared within historical time, 1 it seems impossible to ap- 

 preciate the degree of purity of certain races, to discover their 

 origin, to know whether they are autochthonic or exotic, 

 whether they belonged originally to this or that Fauna, and 

 re-establish the Ethnology of our planet as it was in the be- 

 ginning. To fix the number of primitive species of men, or 

 even the number of actual species, is an insoluble problem to 

 us, and probably to our successors. The attempts of Desmou- 

 lins et jBory de Saint Vincent have only produced imperfect 

 sketches, which have led to contradictory classifications, where 

 the number of arbitrary divisions is nearly equal to more 

 natural divisions. 



The term species has, in classical language, an absolute 

 sense, implying both the idea of a special conformation and 

 special origin, and if some races the Australians, for instance 

 unite these conditions in a sufficient degree, to constitute a 

 clearly marked species, many other pure or mixed races escape, 

 in this respect, a rigorous appreciation. It is for these reasons 

 that many polygenists, after having proclaimed the multiplicity 

 of the origins of humanity, and having recognised the impossi- 

 bility of determining the number and the characters of the 

 primitive stocks, have justly avoided methodically to divide the 

 human genus into species. Many among them, however, who 

 thought that they were, nevertheless, bound to establish divi- 



1 It is undoubted that several American races have been destroyed within 

 300 years ; others having been reduced to a few families, will soon disappear. 

 The Charruas were exterminated in 1831 by the Spaniards of South America: 

 root and branch, as Dr. Latham says. In 1835, four years later, the English 

 of Van Diemen's Land, after a horrible massacre, transported 210 Tasmanians, 

 men, women, and children, to a small island (Flinders), in Bass' Straits. In 1842, 

 after seven years of exile, the number of these unfortunates amounted to 54 ! 

 This was all that remained of a race which, 40 years previously, occupied the 

 whole of Van Diemen's Land, as large as Ireland, and we may soon learn that 

 none of them are in existence. The Malays have entirely destroyed the 

 black races who preceded them in certain isles of the great Indian Archipelago. 

 The Guanches now only exist in a mummified state. The black and progna- 

 thous race which occupied the isles of Japan before the arrival of the Mon- 

 golians, have left no other traces behind than their crania imbedded in the 

 soil ; and it is easy to foresee that within one or two centuries all the black 

 races will have disappeared from these parts, and have been succeeded by 

 Malayans and Europeans. 



