Feb. 19, 18S5] 



NA TURE 



3<>7 



Romans on the other, in the time of Julius Caesar. Yet 

 all these were Aryans, and in treating the Americans 

 as one race it is not intended that they are more 

 closely allied than the different Aryan people of Europe 

 and Asia. The best argument that can be used for the 

 unit}' of the American race — using the word in a broad 

 sense — is the great difficulty of forming an;- natural 

 divisions founded upon physical characters. The im- 

 portant character of the hair does not differ throughout 

 the whole continent. It is always straight and lank, long 

 and abundant on the scalp, but sparse elsewhere. The 

 colour of the skin is practically uniform, notwithstanding 

 the enormous differences of climate under which many 

 members of the group exist. In the features and cranium 

 certain special modifications prevail in different districts, 

 but the same forms appear at widely- separated parts of 

 the continent. I have examined skulls from Vancouver's 

 Island, from Peru, and from Patagonia, which were almost 

 undistinguishable from one another. 



Naturalists who have admitted but four [primary types 

 of the human species, have always found a difficulty with 

 the Americans, hesitating between placing them with the 

 Mongolian or so-called " yellow " races, or elevating them 

 to the rank of a primary group. Cuvier does not seem 

 to have been able to settle this point to his own satisfac- 

 tion, and leaves it an open question. Although the large 

 majority of Americans have in the special form of the 

 nasal bones, leading to the characteristic high bridge of 

 the nose of the living face, in the well-developed super- 

 ciliary ridge and retreating forehead, characters which 

 distinguish them from the typical Asiatic Mongol, in so 

 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 pri- 

 mary divisions, also placing the Americans apart as a 

 fourth. 



Now that the high antiquity of man in America, per- 

 haps as high as that 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 appre- 

 ciable 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 Prof. 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 pre- 

 sent been demonstrated, that it seems preferable to con- 

 sider 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 is 

 mainly due. 



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

 and complexion, chiefly inhabit Northern Europe — Scan- 

 dinavia, Scotland, and North Germany — but, much mixed 



with the next group, they extend as far as Northern 

 Africa and Affghanistan. Their mixture with Mongoloid 

 people in North Europe has given rise to the Lapps 

 and Finns. 



B. Melanochroi, with black hair and eyes, and skin of 

 almost all shades from white to black. They comprise 

 the great majority of the inhabitants of Southern Europe 

 Northern Africa, and South-west Asia, and consist mainly 

 of the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic families. The Dra- 

 vidians of India, and probably the Ainos of Japan, the 

 Maoutze of China, also belong to this race, which may 

 have contributed something to the mixed character of 

 some tribes of Indo-China and the Polynesian Islands, 

 and, as before said, given at least the characters of the 

 hair to the otherwise Negroid inhabitants of Australia. In 

 Southern India, they are probably mixed with a negrito 

 element, and in Africa, where their habitat becomes 

 conterminous with that of the Negroes, numerous cross 

 races have sprung up between them all along the frontier 

 line. The ancient Egyptians were nearly pure Melan- 

 ochroi, though often showing in their features traces of their 

 frequent intermarriage with their Ethiopian neighbours to 

 the south. The Copts and fellahs of modern Egypt are 

 their little-changed descendants. 



In offering this scheme of classification of the human 

 species, I have not thought it necessary to compare it in 

 detail with the numerous systems suggested by previous 

 anthropologists. These will all be found in the general 

 treatises on the subject. As I have remarked before, in 

 its broad outlines it scarcely differs from that proposed 

 by Cuvier nearly sixty years ago, and that the result of 

 the enormous increase of our knowledge during that time 

 having caused such little change, is the best testimony to 

 its being a truthful representation of the facts. Still, 

 however, it can only be looked upon as an approximation. 

 Whatever care be bestowed upon the arrangement of 

 already acquired details, whatever judgment be shown in 

 their due subordination one to another, the acquisition of 

 new knowledge may at any time call for a complete or 

 partial re-arrangement of our system. 



W. H. Flower 



NOTES 



We have to announce the death of Mr. Geoffrey Nevill, who 

 died at Davos Platz on the loth inst. He was for many years 

 Assistant Superintendent in the Calcutta Museum, and had 

 charge there of two conchological collections, which were entirely 

 arranged and named by him. He did some good work there. 



In a recent issue we gave some account of the Liverpool Cor- 

 poration free lectures, which were then in the experimental stage. 

 Since then the lectures have been continued every winter, and we 

 should like to call the attention to them of those of our readers 

 who are interested in the promotion of elementary scientific 

 knowledge among the lower classes, and especially those 

 who have, either as town-councillors or magistrates in their 

 respective towns, influence in their own localities. We 

 have before us a programme of the present course, copies of 

 which can be obtained from Mr. P. Lowell, Liverpool Free 

 Public Library. The lectures are given every Monday, Tues- 

 day, Wednesday, and Thursday from January 5 to March 12 

 inclusive, in the Rotunda Lecture Hall of the Library, which 

 holds more than 1500 people. The entire expense of them is 

 defrayed by the Corporation, and admission is perfectly free. A 

 member of the Corporation invariably occupies the chair at each 

 lecture. Mr. Lant Carpenter lectured there on the night of Feb- 

 ruary 12 upon " Sunspots and their Connection with Weather 

 Changes," to an audience of great extent. It was composed 

 almost exclusively of " the great unwashed," who had come in 

 straight from their work, or, alas, in some cases, from their 

 inforced idleness ; the Liverpool dock porters were there in 



