144 REPORT — 1864. 



But a glance at the map shows this objection to be invalid ; for the eastern region 

 of Asia, from 70° N. lat. to the equator, oilers every variety of temperatui-e, yet is 

 peopled by a single t^'pe, the Mongolian. By tlie side of the fair Circassian we 

 find brown Calmucks : short, dark Lapps live side by side with tall, fair Finns. 

 The colour of the American Indian depends very little on geographical position. 

 In short, colour is distributed over the globe in patches, not in zones. Europeans 

 transplanted from the temperate to the torrid zone do not, even in the course of 

 generations, undergo any considerable moditication of type. This may be seen in 

 the Dutch, who have lived in Soutli Africa for 300 years, and in the descendants of 

 the Spaniards and Portuguese in South America ; also in the negroes transplanted 

 to America. Independently of this, we hnd races widely differing from each other, 

 but dwelling side by side, who, so far as we know, have, from time immemorial, 

 been affected by the" same climate: such is the case with the Bosjesmen and the 

 Kaffirs, the Fuegians and the Patagoniaus, the Parsees and the llindoos. This 

 fixity of ivoe; applies to habits as well as to corporeal features. The life of the 

 Ishmaelite' of to-day might be described in the identical terms applied to his first 

 ancestor ; and the Mongol has the same habits as in the days of ^Eschylus and 

 Herodotus, or, perhaps, tliousauds of years before. It may be objected that a period 

 of a few centuries is little or nothing in ethnological matters. It is, at any rate, 

 everything to those who, without miraculous interference, of which nothing is re- 

 corded, have not more than that period between the Deluge and the date of the 

 oldest E'^j^ptian monument in which to account for the appearance of, for instance, 

 the full-grown, well-marked Nigritian type. It remains for e\ ery one who is con- 

 vinced of these facts to draw from them such inferences as appear to him most 

 truthful and logical. 



On the Poisoned Arrows of Savage Man. 

 Bij Professor H.vrley, M.D., F.Ii.S., Universlti) College, London. 

 A large collection of the missile weapons of savage man shows various gi-ada- 

 tions in the inventive facultj' of races. First, there is the simple pointed stick, 

 fixed in the end of the reed shaft of the arrow, as seen in the weapons of the 

 Solomon Islanders. Experience having taught savages the inefficiency of this kind 

 of arrow, we next see notches cut in the stick ; and this is again improved on by 

 tixino- iron barbs in the arrow-head to retain it in the wound. A great improve- 

 ment" on all these is found in the arrows of the nations of Eastern Africa, which 

 have an iron head to the shaft, as well as barbs below it. The next great step in 

 advance is the invention of a poison wherewith to anointthe point of the missile, 

 so as to insure speedy death to the wounded animal. Poisoned arrows are found 

 amongst the natives of the Malay archipelago. Northern India, Africa, and South 

 America; but many weapons sent, by travellers and others, to the author as 

 poisoned have tm'ned out, on examination, not to be so, but to have been merely 

 smeared with paint for ornament or conservation. The desideratum in an effective 

 poisoned missile is so to contrive it as to enable it to remain in the wound suffi- 

 ciently long to make the action of the poison certain. An iron or even a smooth 

 wooden point or blade does not answer this end. The savages of the banks of the 

 Zambesi, in Africa, therefore show considerable ingenuity in winding a cotton 

 thread round the arrow-head, and smearing this with the tatal juice. But the 

 Indians of the northern parts of South Ameiica have gone beyond this, and have 

 invented the most ingenious weapon yet known amongst uncivilized nations. It is 

 a reed with a sharp point fixed in a hole at the end. The arrow-head pierces the 

 animal; the concussion shakes oft' the shaft. An Indian on going to the chase takes 

 a quiver full of t'.iese points — they are, in fact, his shot ; the point alone remains 

 in the wound of the animal he shoots, and its death is thereby rendered almost 

 certain. Moreover, if by some mischance his booty escapes him, the Indian does 

 not lose the arrow, which takes him some time to manufacture, and of which he 

 can only carry with him a limited supply. The author has carefully analyzed and 

 experimented on all the arrow-poisons which he had been able to obtain, and the 

 residt was that there were only two distinct kinds of the physiological action of the 

 poison used by savage races ; one is t>-pified by the Woorara of the northern parts 

 of South America, and the other by the poison of Borneo, known in the latter 



