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Cii. XLIIT.] 



OEIGIN AND DISTEIBUTION OF MAN. 



4G9 



and animals are diffused. We ought not^ tlien^ to wonder, 

 that during the ages required for some tribes of the human 

 race to attain that advanced stage of civilisation which em- 

 powers the navigator to cross the ocean in all directions with 

 security, the Avliole earth should have become the abode of 

 rude tribes of hunters and fishers. Were the whole of man- 

 kind now cut off, with the exception of one family, inhabit- 

 ino" the old or new continent, or Australia, or even some coral 

 islet of the Pacific, we might expect their descendants, though 

 they should never become more enlightened than the Austra- 

 lians, the South Sea Islanders, or the Esquimaux, to spread 

 in the course of ages over the Avhole earth, diffused partly by 

 the tendency of population to increase, in a limited district, 

 beyond the means of subsistence, and partly by the accidental 

 drifting of canoes by tides and currents to distant shores. 



Man Jias spread from a single starting-point. — The close 

 afiinity of all the races of mankind in their bodily conforma- 

 tion and in their mental and moral attributes, and the manner 

 in which the most divergent varieties intermarry and blend 

 together, requires us to believe that the species was essen- 

 tially in all its characters what it now is before it began to be 

 diffused in the manner above supposed. The more we study 

 the relcitions of man to the rest of the organic world, the 

 more complete do we find his subjection to the same general 

 laAvs. If, therefore, we infer that every species of animal has 

 had a single birthplace, it is natural to expect that we shall 

 find that man is no exception to the rule, and that he also 

 spread over all the continents and islands from a single 

 starting-point. But it does not follow that all are descendants 

 of a single pair. Indeed, if we embrace the doctrine of 

 Transmutation, the process by which a new species comes into 

 being is by no means simple, and it is not easy to form a 

 precise idea of its elaboration during that period of transition 

 when certain varieties tending in a given direction are re- 

 peatedly getting the better of others in the struggle for life. 

 Under the constant influence of the same external conditions, 

 the characters of such varieties become intensified during 

 many successive generations, and when at last they are fixed 

 and permanent the ancestral type may have perished, or in 



