26 VEETEBRATES. 



as tiie best mark of nobility, they learn to track an enemy by bin 

 footsteps with unexampled patience and untiring assiduity. No 

 bloodhound ever followed his prey with more certainty than the 

 American Indian when on his "war-path" tracks his retiiing 

 enemies, and when near them his approach is silent as the gliding 

 of the serpent, his blow as deadly as its fangs. 



The Malay race, whose lot is thrown amid islands and coasts, 

 are as crafty and fierce on the waters as the American Indians in 

 their woods. Accustomed to the water from their earliest infancy, 

 able to swim before they can walk, making playthings of waves 

 that would dash an ordinary swimmer to pieces against the rocks, 

 their existence is almost entirely passed on the water. As the 

 American Indians are slayers and robbers by land, so are the Malays 

 murderers and pirates by sea. They have been known to capture 

 a ship in the midst of a storm by swimming to it and climbing up 

 the cable, and many instances of their crafty exploits in ship- 

 taking are on record. For a full account of their ferocity, cun- 

 ning, and endurance, the reader is referred to Sir James Brooks's 

 reports on the Borneo pirates. 



The Esquimaux, situated among ice and snow, where mer- 

 cury freezes in the open air, and water becomes ice within a yard 

 of a blazing fire, pass an apparently inactive life. They actually 

 form the ice and snow into warm and comfortable houses ; wrapped 

 up in enormous fur garments that almost disguise the human form, 

 they defy the intensity of the frost, and place their highest hap- 

 piness in the chance possession of a whale, which will furnish 

 them with food, clothing, and light through their long winter. 



All these races, although they differ in habits and external 

 appearance, are but varieties of one species. There is not so 

 marked a distinction between the European and Negro, as between 

 the light and active racer and the heavy brewer's horse ; yet no 

 one attempts to deny that these are one species. The varieties in 

 man are permanent; that is, the child of Negro parents will be a 

 Negro, and the child of Malay parents will be a Malay, but that 

 is no proof of a distinct species, as precisely the same argument 

 may be used with regard to the horse. The mind is the important 



