HOMINID 743 
golian, and the Caucasian were being gradually fashioned into their 
respective types, is entirely wanting, or if any exists it is at present 
safely buried in the earth, perhaps to be revealed at some unex- 
pected time and in some unforeseen manner. Even the materials 
from which a history of the modifications of the human species as 
known to our generation must be constructed are rapidly passing 
away, since the age in which we live is an age in which, in a far 
greater degree than any previous one, the destruction of races, both 
by annihilation and absorption, is going on. Owing to the rapid 
extension of maritime discovery and commerce, changes such as 
have never been witnessed before are now taking place in the 
ethnology of the world—changes especially affecting the island 
populations among which, more than elsewhere, the solution of 
many of these problems may be looked for. The subject is, how- 
ever, attracting the attention of observers of all countries to a 
greater degree than it ever has before, and such progress has been 
made in perfecting the methods of investigation of racial character- 
istics that we are beginning to learn what lines of research are 
profitable and what are barren, so that we may hope the time is 
not far distant when we may get some clear insight into the know- 
ledge of the natural classification and relationships of the races of 
Man. 
The following is a brief summary of the principal results 
which appear to have been attained up to the present time by the 
study of this somewhat difficult subject.’ 
The most ordinary observation is sufficient to demonstrate the 
fact that certain groups of men are strongly marked from others by 
definite characters common to all members of the group, and trans- 
mitted regularly to their descendants by the laws of inheritance. 
Thus the Chinaman and the Negro, the native of Patagonia and the 
Andaman Islander, are as structurally distinct from each other as 
are many of the so-called species of any natural group of animals. 
Indeed, it may be said with truth that their differences are even 
greater than those which mark the groups called genera by many 
naturalists of the present day. Nevertheless the difficulty of 
parcelling out all the individuals composing the human species into 
certain definite groups, and of saying of each man that he belongs 
to one or other of such groups, is insuperable. No such classifica- 
tion has ever been, or, indeed, can ever be obtained. There is not 
one of the most characteristic and most extreme forms, like those 
just named, from which transitions cannot be traced by almost 
imperceptible gradations to any of the other equally characteristic 
and equally extreme forms. Indeed, a large proportion of mankind 
1 “On the Classification of the Varieties of the Human Species,” by W. H. 
Flower, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 
May 1885. 
