SECT. V.] SHAPE OP SKULL. 233 



the founder of this theory, designates the Ethiopian 1 and Mon- 

 golian forms as the extremes between which the Caucasian 

 occupies the centre, the American being placed between the 

 latter and the Mongolian, and the Malay between the Ethiopian 

 and the Caucasian. The various races, distinguished by 

 Blumenbach, are placed in the following order : Negro, 

 Malay, Caucasian, American, Mongolian ; so that the White, 

 assuming the unity of the human race, appears as the medium 

 or normal type of humanity. On taking, however, into con- 

 sideration not merely the shape of the skull, but other ana- 

 tomical differences, there can be no doubt that the White and 

 the Negro form the extremes ; the latter, on account of his 

 resemblance to the ape, which nearly disappears in the white 

 man. 



Blumenbach' s division into five races is either too large or 

 too small, manifestly corresponding with the geographical 

 scheme of five parts of the globe. Lacepede and Dumeril 

 added a sixth variety, the so-called Hyperborean race of the 

 polar regions; whilst Yirey 2 considers the Hottentots and 

 Papuas as the sixth chief variety, and the Negro and the 

 White as distinct species. The facts, however, would lead 

 either to the adoption of the three principal types, according 

 to Cuvier, namely, the Mongol, the Negro, and the Caucasian, 

 named by some writers after Shem, Ham, and Japhet, or 

 to assume a considerably larger number. Prichard, Smith, 

 and Latham, are inclined to adopt the former division ; 

 Pickering assumes eleven, Bory fifteen, Desmoulins sixteen, 

 and Agassiz and Nott an indefinite number, of species. Hom- 

 bron 3 assumes, even in Australia, the population of which 

 was hitherto considered by all ethnographers as belonging to 

 one family, a number of distinct species, and declares the in- 

 habitants of Van Diemen's land to be also of a distinct species. 



1 It is scarcely necessary to mention that the term " Ethiopian" is as im- 

 proper as the term Caucasian, which Blumenbach used simply because the 

 skull of a Georgian woman seemed to him as the best representative of this 

 type, without any intention on his part to express thereby an opinion as to 

 the cradle of these peoples. We shall, however, abide by these designations, 

 as they are generally adopted. 



2 " Hist. nat. du genre hum.," i, p. 318, 1834. 



3 " Zoologie," i, p. 312, etc., in Urville, " Voy. au Pole Sud." 



