The Zoologist — Febiiuauy, 1869. 1529 



The Death of Species. By Edward Newman. 



" II ue chanj^e qu'en mourant." 

 (Continued from S. S. 1395.) 



Chapter III. — On the Decay of those Human Races which 

 INHABIT the Shores of the Mediterranean. 



It will have been observed that the races to which I alluded in the 

 previous chapter, the Guanches, the Newfoundlanders, the Tas- 

 manians, the Australians, the Red Indians, have left us no legacies in 

 the shape of books, buildings, statues or paintings; and certainly will 

 leave us none, although some of them may yet exist for centuries. 

 Their history, such as it is, must be written by aliens; some, as we 

 have seen, enthusiastic friends, others as decided enemies : and it may 

 be observed that races which could not make any mark to show where 

 they had been, are not likely to be so highly esteemed by posterity as 

 those who have written a history with their own hands. The races who 

 have done this are now to be considered, and we shall see whether arts 

 and arms, the highest intellectual power, or the most wonderful prowess 

 in war, can prolong existence, or serve in any degree as a means of 

 escape from the reign of law. It seems desirable in this, and also in 

 the following chapter, in which I shall treat exclusively of the existent 

 and widely-scattered Jews, Kelts and Saxons, to abandon the word 

 " species," leaving it to be resumed hereafter : I do so under the im- 

 pression that any word or phrase implying a foregone conclusion, 

 while the inquiry is still pending, savours too much of that false logic 

 which is appropriately called " begging the question." I admit, indeed 

 lament, that other terms in ordinary use, such as " race," " family," 

 "nation," "tribe," &c., are vague to a fault, but I infinitely prefer the 

 vague to the dogmatic. 



I trust I have shown in the preceding chapters that species of ani- 

 mals, exactly the same as individual animals, and races of men, exactly 

 the same as individual men, have submitted, because they could do no 

 other, to the law of death : I think it will be an equally easy task to 

 show that other races of men have submitted, also because they could 

 do no other, to the operation of that law in the depauperation, de- 

 generation, deterioration, which is the unmistakable evidence of 

 eventual dissolution. Mr. Darwin fully admits the existeiice of dead 

 or dying branches of the universal tree of animal and plant life ; but 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. IV. G 



