44 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 



varieties are such, that they are obvious, and at once appreciated 

 even by ignorant persons,* they are such that the most emi- 

 nent monogenists agree in regarding them as everywhere suf- 

 ficient to make a difference in species, or even in genus itself. 



They refer to every point of organisation, and we shall see 

 farther on that they are found to be as decided and as palpable 

 both in the mind and in the natural constitution. We do not 

 pretend to speak of all of them in this place, not even to enu- 

 merate them ; we shall merely quote the principal points, or 

 those which appear to deserve some special remark. The 

 number of those which exist, or which are believed to exist, 

 for this is a necessary restriction, is immense ; in fact, if we 

 are the first to admit that there is an infinite variety of differ- 

 ences, considerable in themselves, between the various kinds 

 of men, we also wish to avoid falling into the errors which are 

 so often committed, and which happen from the small number 

 of facts which have been observed, the investigators having 

 often given the value of general facts to individual observation. 



We find more than one example of these hasty opinions in 

 the history of anthropological studies. Towards the end of 

 the last century, when the colour of the Negro had already 

 been for a hundred years the dominant study of the scientific 

 world of Europe, f a certain Kluegel affirmed (in the Encyclo- 

 pedic de Berlin, 1782) that the lips of the Ethiopian were of a 

 fine red colour. A great commotion arose ; Summering him- 

 self was roused ; he wrote everywhere, sought for information, 



differed in this matter from Europeans in an extraordinary degree. Knox, 

 The Races of Men, London, 1850, p. 2. 



* " The physical characteristics which distinguish human races, one from 

 the other, are, perhaps, the one fact in natural history which has always most 

 struck the imagination of mankind. . . . Historians relate, that when Co- 

 lumbus first returned, Europeans could not take their eyes off the plants and 

 unknown animals which he had brought with him ; and above all, the Indians, 

 so different from all the races of men they had ever seen." Flourens, Con- 

 siderations sur I' enseignement de I'Histoire Naturelle de I'Homme. (Annales 

 des Sciences Naturelles, vol. x, p. 357.) This wonder is renewed every day; and 

 I once knew an intelligent negro who had a very unpleasant remembrance 

 of the French provinces, where he had been the object of a very general and 

 indiscreet curiosity. 



f The works which followed one another on this subject are due to Reia- 

 hold Wagner (1699), B. S. Albin (1737), Barriere (1742), Mitchell (3 741), Baeck 

 (1748), Meckel (1753-1757), Le Cat (1756-1765), etc. See G. Pouchet, Des 

 Colorations de I'Epiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864. 



