The Zoologist — February, 1869. 1533 



characteristic that it is quite impossible to rnistal<e them. These dis- 

 tinct types still predominate in Egj'pt and the neighbouring countines. 

 ' Thus, then,' says Mr. Poole. ' in this immense interval we do not find 

 the least change in the Negro or the Arab; and even the type which 

 seems to be intermediate between them is virtually as unaltered. 

 Those who consider that length of time can change a type of man, will 

 do well to consider the fact that three thousand years give no ratio on 

 which a calculation could be founded.' I am, however, not aware that 

 it is supposed by any school of Ethnologists that ' time' alone, without 

 a change of external conditions, will produce an alteration of type. 

 Let us now turn to the instances relied on by Mr. Crawfurd. The 

 millions, he says, ' of African Negroes that have during three cen- 

 turies been transported to the New World and its islands are the same 

 in colour as the present inhabitants of the parent country of their fore- 

 fathers. The Creole Spaniards, who have for at least as long a time 

 been settled in tropical America, are as fair as the people of Arragon 

 and Andalusia, with the same variety of colour in the hair and eye as 

 their progenitors. The pure Dutch Creole colonists of the Cape of 

 Good Hope, after dwelling two centuries among black Caffirs and 

 yellow Hottentots, do not differ in colour from the people of 

 Holland.' " 



But this is not all : perfectly true it is that the body has exhibited 

 no alteration, and that the mind has not advanced; but is it equally 

 true that the mind has not retrograded ? The Negro, Arab and Egyp- 

 tian are viell worthy of examination, but why not extend the inquiry to 

 neighbouring and kindred nations, to the Assyrian, Phoenician, Car- 

 thaginian, Roman, Greek? Shall we not find it impossible to deny 

 that in them, indeed in every historic and civilized race, there is 

 evidence of retrogression ? I will go a little more into detail. 



Negroes. — I believe our best ethnologists would agree in assigning 

 to the Australasian natives the highest antiquity, and on the principle 

 of evolution we might expect to find them the most advanced in the 

 evidence of mental culture; but history ignores them altogether, so 

 that we are compelled to commence with the Negro. The country of 

 the Cushites, strange as it may appear in the instance of so great a 

 people, has been a subject of doubt and controversy : they certainly 

 travelled northwards in their wonderful invasions of Judaea, and whe- 

 ther from the east or west of the Red Sea matters little to my theory\ 

 Herodotus describes two races, Asiatic with straight, and African with 

 woolly, hair. Kitto justly supposes the term Cushite of the Hebrew, 



