VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 3 



him at once to the physical, as well as to the moral* circumstances in which he 

 was to dwell upon the earth ? It is indeed difficult to imagine that an all-wise 

 Providence, after having by the Deluge destroyed all mankind excepting the 

 family of Noah, should leave these to combat, and with seemingly uncertain and 

 inadequate means, the various external causes that tended to oppose the great 

 object of their dispersion : and we are left to the reasonable conclusion, that each 

 Race was adapted from the beginning to its peculiar local destination. In other 

 words, it is assumed, that the physical characteristics which distinguish the different 

 Races, are independent of external causes. 



Such appear to have been the primitive distinctions among men : but hostile 

 invasions, the migratory habits of some tribes, and the casual dispersion of others 

 into remote localities, have a constant tendency to confound these peculiarities; and 

 the proximity of two races has uniformly given rise to an intermediate variety, 

 partaking of the characters of both, without being identical with either : these are 

 QdiWeA mixed races. 



The grouping of mankind into Races, has occupied the ingenuity of many of 

 the best naturalists of the past and present century ; and here again we observe 

 that diversity of opinion which is so frequent in human researches, Linnaeus 

 referred all the human family to five races, viz : the American, the European, the 

 Asiatic, and the African, and individuals of preternatural conformation. The 

 Count de Buffon proposed six great divisions, viz; 1, The Hyperborean or Lap- 

 lander, which embraces the Polar nations. — 2, The Tartar, which includes the 

 eastern and central nations of Asia. — 3, The Southern Asiatic, which embraces 

 the South Sea Islanders. — 4, The European. — 5, The Ethiopian. — And 6, The 

 American. At a subsequent period BufFon reduced the races to five, by grouping 

 the Laplanders with the Tartars, inasmuch as he regarded the one as a degenerate 

 branch of the other.f 



More recently Professor Blumenbach, of Gottingen, to whom this department 

 of science is under great obligations, has adopted the arrangement of BufFon ; 

 changing the names, however, of some of the divisions, and assigning, with much 

 greater accuracy, their geographical distribution. Thus, the Laplander and Tartar 

 of BufFon constitute the Mongolian variety of Blumenbach ; the Southern Asiatic 

 of the one corresponds to the Malay of the other; and the European and Caucasian 

 represent the same people in both arrangements. 



The system of the celebrated Cuvier is still more elementary, for it proposes 



* Genesis, IX, 25, 26, 27. t Sonnini's Buffon, XX, p. 120, &c. 



