THE FORMATION OF RACES. 187 



ner of action, it ouglit not to be so to our reason, as long as we 

 Iceep steadily in mind that tlie increase of each species and each 

 race is constantly checked in various ways; so that if any new 

 check, even a slight one, be superadded, the race will surely de- 

 crease in number; and decreasing numbers will sooner or later 

 lead to extinction; the end, in most cases, being promptly deter- 

 mined by the inroads of conquering tribes. 



On the Formation of the Races of Man. — In some cases the 

 crossing of distinct races has led to the formation of a new race. 

 The singular fact that Europeans and Hindoos, who belong to 

 the same Aryan stock, and speak a language fundamentally the 

 same, differ widely in appearance, whilst Europeans differ but 

 little from Jews, who belong to the Semitic stock, and speak 

 quite another language, has been accounted for by Broca,*" 

 through certain Aryan branches having been largely crossed by 

 indigenous tribes during their wide diffusion. When two races 

 in close contact cross, the first result is a heterogeneous mixture: 

 thus Mr. Hunter, in describing the Santali or hill-tribes of India, 

 says that hundreds of imperceptible gradations may be traced 

 "from the black, squat tribes of the mountains to the tall olive- 

 "colored Brahman, with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, and 

 "high but narrow head;" so that it is necessary in courts of 

 justice to ask the witnesses whether they are Santalis or Hin- 

 doos.™ Whether a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabit- 

 ants of some of the Polynesian Islands, formed by the crossing 

 of two distinct races, with few or no pure members left, would 

 ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evidence. 

 But as with our domesticated animals, a cross-breed can cer- 

 tainly be fixed and made uniform by careful selection" in the 

 course of a few generations, we may infer that the free inter- 

 crossing of a heterogeneous mixture during a long descent would 

 supply the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to 

 reversion; so that the crossed race would ultimately become 

 homogeneous, though it might not partake in an equal degree 

 of the characters of the two parent-races. 



Of all the differences between the races of man, the color of 

 the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked. It 

 was formerly thought that differences of this kind could be 

 accounted for by long exposure to different climates; but Pal- 

 las first showed that this is not tenable, and he has since been 



*= 'On Anthropology,' translation 'Anthropolog. Review,' Jan. 1868, 

 p. 38. 



™ 'The Annals of Rural Bengal,' 1868 p. 134. 



°' 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. 

 p. 95. 



