200 PHYSICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART I 



the immediate vicinity of nations which are related to the 

 Malays, whilst the latter extend to Madagascar ; and that the 

 tropical province of Asia contains the four most distinct human 

 stocks inhabiting the globe (Caucasian, Mongolian, Malay, 

 and Negro races), with some probability considered as their 

 cradle. There can, therefore, be no question of such a sepa- 

 ration of the families of mankind in zoological and botanical 

 provinces, which may, perhaps, more properly apply to Africa, 

 the northern shorelands of which present a flora and fauna 

 distinct from the regions south of the Atlas, whilst similar 

 differences are presented by the Nile valley and the Cape. 

 With these districts correspond, as great ethnographic divisions, 

 the Berbers, who belong to the Caucasian race, the Negroes, 

 the Egyptians, the Abyssinians, and the Hottentots. In all 

 other parts of the globe, it is scarcely necessary to say, there 

 is no correspondence of the numerous subdivisions in special 

 faunas and floras of Agassiz, with the groups of nations in- 

 habiting these parts, and his subdivisions have no anthropo- 

 logical signification. 



But what tells against the whole hypothesis of Agassiz, and 

 should at the outset have prevented its adoption, is the circum- 

 stance that the cradle of mankind can only be imagined to 

 have been situated in a warm climate; otherwise the first 

 human beings must have perished in a climate where artificial 

 protection and certain kinds of knowledge were requisite to 

 obtain nutriment in sufficient quantity. To this must be added 

 the improbability that, with the great capacity for locomotion 

 possessed by man, and the wants he is subject to in a state of 

 nature, the parent stocks of each human species should have 

 remained in their original country from the period of their first 

 appearance on the globe until the historical period, an im- 

 mense space of time. While extensive emigrations contradict 

 such a fixed abode, we find, on the other hand, in many 

 parts of the globe, men of perfectly distinct types living in 

 close vicinity, facts very unfavourable to the above theory. 

 If it be correct, we need not assume any migrations of 

 peoples; just as Desmoulins considers the Indo-Grermans as 

 autochthons in the countries of Scandinavia to the Caspian 



