THE KXTINCTION OF KACES. 177 



generations, become smaller and weaker, whilst those which have 

 run wild on the Pampas have acquired larger and coarser heads; 

 and such changes are manifestly due, not to any one pair, but to 

 all the individuals having been subjected to the same conditions, 

 aided, perhaps, by the principle of reversion. The new sub- 

 breeds in such cases are not descended from any single pair, but 

 from many individuals which have varied in different degrees, 

 but in the same general manner; and we may conclude that the 

 races of man have been similarly produced, the modifications 

 being either the direct result of exposure to different conditions, 

 or the Indirect result of some form of selection. But to this 

 latter subject we shall presently return. 



On the Extinction of the Races of Man. — The partial or com- 

 plete extinction of many races and sub-races of man is historically 

 known. Humboldt saw in South America a parrot which was 

 the sole living creature that could speak a word of the language 

 of a lost tribe. Ancient monuments and stone implements found 

 in all parts of the world, about which no tradition has been 

 preserved by the present inhabitants, indicate much extinction. 

 Some small and broken tribes, remnants of former races, still 

 survive in isolated and generally mountainous districts. In 

 Europe the ancient races were all, according to Schaaffhausen,™ 

 "lower in the scale than the rudest living savages;" they must 

 therefore have differed, to a certain extent, from any existing 

 race. The remains described by Professor Broca from Les Byzies, 

 though they unfortunately appear to have belonged to a single 

 family, indicate a race with a most singular combination of low 

 or simious, and of high characteristics. This race is "entirely 

 "different from any other, ancient or modern, that we have ever 

 "heard of.'"" It differed, therefore, from the quaternary race of 

 the caverns of Belgium. 



Man can long resist conditions which appear extremely un- 

 favorable for his existence.'^ He has long lived in the extreme 

 regions of the 'North, with no wood for his canoes or imple- 

 ments, and with only Blubber as fuel, and melted snow as drink. 

 In the southern extremity of America the Fuegians survive with- 

 out the protection of clothes, or of any building worthy to be 

 called a hovel. In South Africa the aborigines wander over arid 

 plains, where dangerous beasts abound. Man can withstand the 

 deadly influence of the Teral at the foot of the Himalaya, and 

 the pestilential shores of tropical Africa. 



i® Translation In 'Anthropological Review,' Oct. 186S, p. 431. 



*" 'Transact. Internat. Congress of Prehistoric Arch,' 1868, pp. 172-175. 

 See also Broca (translation) in 'Anthropological Review,' Oct. 1868, p. 

 410. 



*i Dr. Gerland 'Ueber das Aussterben der Naturvolker," 1868, s. 82, 

 13 



