THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 19 



made arrangements to send them to Calcutta. It would seem 

 from other information that a Mr. Trail, for many years Com- 

 missioner at Kuman, had also seen these extraordinary beings, 

 and had even been so fortunate as to procure one of them, whose 

 appearance fully justified the traditional name given to them 

 by the natives. In fact, other evidence 'Some of it historical 

 may be added to this in order to prove the existence of such 

 an inferior race in different parts of the Indian peninsula. Mr. 

 Piddington thus describes him: "He was short, flat-nosed, 

 had pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles round the corners of 

 the mouth and cheeks ; his arms were disproportionately long, 

 and there was a portion of reddish hair to be seen on the rusty- 

 black skin. Altogether, if crouched in a dark corner or on a 

 tree, he might have been mistaken for a large orang-utan." 

 It must be noticed that Mr. Piddington had travelled a great 

 deal, and that he had acquired, even without his own know- 

 ledge, some experience in anthropology. He takes care to tell 

 us that he had seen in their turn the Bosjesmen, the Hotten- 

 tots, the Papous, the Alfourous, the aborigines of Australia, New 

 Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands, which, indeed, gives great 

 authority to the facts which he relates.* What, we may indeed 

 exclaim, are these really men ? After journeying over the 

 beaten track, see how far we are from that Aryan family, the 

 mistress of arts and science ; how much we approach the brute, 

 even if we have not already reached that point ? We have 

 descended ; let us now raise the other mammalia to man, and 

 in the highest degree to which we can attain, let us endeavour 

 to measure the distance to the point we have just left. Let it 

 be well understood, we shall only consider in this place the 

 highest mammalia ; for the question becomes more complicated 

 on every side as soon as the difference in the organisms be- 

 comes more apparent. In regard to this, facts have often 

 spoken for a long time, and the savant, whose testimony in 



* M. Ehrenberg, speaking one day of the unknown centre of Africa, said 

 to us, " that it might not be impossible to find there men so different from 

 us that we ought to make of them, willingly or unwillingly, a special group." 

 I quote these words in no way with the design of presuming that there is 

 such an order of beings ; but in order to show that the father of the naturalists 

 of Europe, the friend of Humboldt, believes in something else than the unity 

 of the human species, because he admits that a generic plurality is possible. 



c2 



