1/4 The Descent of Man Part 1 



ciossed in all degrees. Many analogous cases could be be added ; 

 for instance, in Africa. Hence the races of man are not suf- 

 Itciently 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 jierceived 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 

 Polynesians, 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 asserted. 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, colour and hairiness differ considerably ; 

 as dues colour 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 naturalists 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 (Crawfurd), 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 shews that they graduate into each 



" For instance with the abori- " See a good discussion on this 



ffine.s of America and Australia, subject in Waitz, ' Introduct. to 



i'rof. Huxley says (' Transact. Intel'- Anthropology,' Eng. translat. 18B3, 



nat. Congress of Prehist. Arch.' pp. 198-208, 227. I have talten 



1868, p. 105) that the skulls of some of the above statements from 



many South Germans and Swiss are H. Tuttle's ' Origin and Antiquity 



" as short and .as broad as those of of Ph ifsical Man,' Boston, 1 866, p 



" »h« Tartars," &c. 35. 



