HIS ETHNOLOGICAL RELATIONS. 75 



unnecessary to complicate our argument with this 

 view of equal and independent origin, and proceed to 

 consider the major varieties as divergences from one 

 common source, just as the minor nationalities can be 

 shown, from their language, customs, and features, to 

 be unmistakable offshoots from the same variety. It 

 is no doubt quite possible that species might be inde- 

 pendently created in the widely-separated areas in 

 wliich we now find them ; but the idea of their 

 developmental descent from pre-existing forms, and 

 in conformity to a great aboriginal plan, is much 

 more probable, and far more intelligible. Even were 

 the separate origin of the great varieties — Caucasian, 

 Mongolian, Ethiopian, etc. — admitted, there is still 

 the question. Did they originate simultaneously, or 

 what was the order of their appearance ^ If not 

 simultaneously, which was the earlier and which the 

 later ] and if earlier and later, what were the peculiar 

 conditions that favoured the advent of the former and 



writers have recently adopted the idea of two great divisions of 

 mankind, " equal in value, and marked by characteristics of equal 

 importance" — ^viz. the whites and the Macks ; the former including 

 the so-called Caucasian, Mongolian, Malay, and American ; and the 

 latter, the African, Australasian, and Papuan or Oceanic. For the 

 ultimate purposes of anthropological science this division is not 

 without its value, and may he further referred to in Andrew Mur- 

 ray's important work on the Geographical Distribution of Mammals, 

 1866. 



