170 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



Africa. Hence the races of man are not sufficiently distinct to 

 inhabit the same country without fusion; and the absence of 

 fusion affords the usual and best test of specific distinctness. 



Our naturalist would likewise be much disturbed as soon as 

 he perceived that the distinctive characters of all the races were 

 highly variable. This fact strikes every one on first beholding 

 the negro slaves in Brazil, who have been imported from all 

 parts of Africa. The same remark holds good with the Poly- 

 nesians, and with many other races. It may be doubted whether 

 any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is 

 constant. Savages, even within the limits of the same tribe, 

 are not nearly so uniform In character, as has been often as- 

 serted. Hottentot women offer certain peculiarities, more strongly 

 marked than those occurring in any other race, but these are 

 known not to be of constant occurrence. In the several American 

 tribes, color and hairiness differ considerably; as does color to a 

 certain degree, and the shape of the features greatly in the 

 Negroes of Africa. The shape of the skull varies much in some 

 races ; " and so it is with every other character. Now all natural- 

 ists have learnt by dearly-bought experience, how rash it is to 

 attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters. 



But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating 

 the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into 

 each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, 

 of their having 'intercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully 

 than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible 

 diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as 

 a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), 

 as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), 

 eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), 

 sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawford), or 

 as sixty-three, according to Burke." This diversity of judgment 

 does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, 

 but it shows that they graduate into each other, and that it is 

 hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between 

 them. 



Every naturahst who has had the misfortune to undertake the 

 description of a group of highly varying organisms, has en- 

 countered cases (I speak after experience) precisely like that of 



" For instance with the aborigines of America and Australia. Prof. 

 Huxley says ('Transact. Internat. Congress of Prehist. Arch.' 1S6S, 

 p. 105) that the skulls of many South Germans and Swiss are "as 

 "short and as hroad as those of the Tartars," &c. 



1' See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, 'Introduct. to An- 

 thropology,' Eng. translat. 1863, pp. 198-208, 227. I have taken some of 

 the above statements from H. Tuttle's 'Origin and Antiquity of Physi- 

 cal Man,' Boston, 1866, p. 35. 



