118 • REPORT 1865. 



skin of various shades ; dark eyes, a flat face, depressed nose, jutting jaws, thick 

 lips and large mouth ; with oblique incisor teeth. To this was to be added a pecu- 

 liar odour of the skin, offensive to and unknown in the other races of man. He 

 did not think that the form of the skull, in so far as it is the brain-case, could be 

 insisted on as a criterion of the African Negro, for he did not believe it had any 

 characters by which it could certainly be distinguished from the skulls of nearly- 

 allied races, such as those of the Abyssinians and of the Oriental Negroes. The 

 word Negro was obviously a corruption of the Latin adjective for "black." The 

 intellectual character of Negroes might be judged of by the low grade of civiliza- 

 tion which they had attained, notwithstanding that their country has furnished 

 them with nearly all the appliances that contribute to social progress — fertile soil, 

 cultivable cereals, domesticable animals, useful metals, and so forth — in a far higher 

 degree than the most advanced nations of native America and the fairer race of the 

 Pacific isles. One remarkable example of the obtuseness of the African Negro was 

 his never having tamed the elephant, which is far more abundant in his country 

 than in any other part of the world. The African elephant is, indeed, a distinct 

 species from the Indian, but it is equally amenable to domestication, as sufficiently 

 attested by the well-ascertained fact of the African being the elephant domesticated 

 by the Carthaginians, a people of Asiatic origin, whose example the African Ne- 

 groes have not had the capacity even to imitate. The Negro also had never shown 

 ingenuity enough to invent letters, symbolic or phonetic. 



On Cannibalism in Relation to Ethnology, By J. Crawfurd, F.R.S., F.G.S. 



The argument of this paper was to the effect that the early races of men, origi- 

 nally eaters of the raw flesh of animals, were driven at a subsequent stage of pro- 

 gress, when wild animals had become scarce, to eat the bodies of their slain 

 enemies. This was the stage of cannibalism, and it ceased when, pressed by a 

 diminishing supply of food, human ingenuity was stimulated to invent means for 

 augmenting it by cultivating vegetable food and domesticating animals. In classic 

 times the Greeks and Romans, and all the tribes and nations with which they held 

 intercourse, had reached this stage, and Herodotus is the only classic writer who 

 charges two Asiatic nations with cannibalism. We have other evidence, however, 

 of the ancestors of the most civilized nations of Europe and Asia eating human 

 flesh, in the disinterment from grottos of human bones artificially split for the ex- 

 traction of marrow, and so forth. Cannibalism was formerly, and is still practised 

 by South American Indians, as well as by the New Zealanders and the inhabitants 

 of many islands in the Pacific and in the Malay Archipelago. The author particu- 

 larly cited the cannibalism of the New Zealanders as a case in support of his view 

 that savages are prompted to cannibalism by the deficiency of other animal food. 



On the Isthmus of Panama" and Inter-Oceanic Ship Canal Routes. 



By Dr. Cullen. 



This was a review of the various routes which have been hitherto proposed for 

 a ship canal across the narrower parts of America, namely, those of Tehuantepec, 

 Honduras (from Puerto Caballos to Fonseca Bay), Nicaragua, Chiriqui, Panama, 

 Chepo, Atrato and San Juau, Atrato, Napipi and Cupica, Atrato and Truando, and 

 lastly, that of Darien, from Caledonian Harbour to the Gulf of San Miguel. The 

 author gave the preference to the last-mentioned line, which he had himself ex- 

 plored some years ago. It is the only one, except that of Chiriqui, which supplies 

 the indispensable conditions of a good harbour at each end. The failure of the 

 various expeditions sent out in 1853 to discover a practicable line for a canal, was 

 attributed by the author to the refusal or inability of the siu'veyors, Mr. L. Gis- 

 borne and others, to examine the only point where a passage of the mountains was 

 practicable — a break in the chain inland of Caledonia Harbour. The Cordillera is 

 stated to consist here of two separate chains, the extremities of which overlap each 

 other, leaving between them a valley, running at an angle of about 20° with the coast. 

 In 1860 a partial exploration of this line was made by MM. Bourdiol, De Puydt 

 and Bourcier, and again, in 1861, by the same gentlemen and M. de Champville. 

 In 1861 a further examination was made by MM. de Puydt and Tronchon ; and 



