212 BEVIEWS — INDIGENOUS BACES OE THE EABTH. 



and other specimens of " Industrie primitive ;" but having examined 

 his eighty engraved plates, with hundreds of figured examples, we 

 venture to say that any man may provide himself, blindfold, with 

 equally good evidence of antediluvian and preadamite art, in the first 

 heap of broken stones he stumbles over ! 



And what, let us now ask, is the position of this science of 

 Ethnology, which undertakes to dictate to all older olog ies? It is, 

 as we have said, in its veriest infancy. Ethnologists are not as yet. 

 agreed upon the simplest common terms. Scarcely two of them can 

 be warranted bo mean the same thing when they employ such simple 

 words as race, family, or species ; to say nothing of Arian, Touranian, 

 Mongolian, Berber, and the like, once more discussed here. The 

 relative importance of philological, physiological, and archasological 

 modes of investigation are so little determined, that the, craniologist 

 slights the philologer, and the linguist in turn scorns the 

 cranioscopist. Is such then a time for the students of this young and 

 deeply important science to waste their energies in bootless 

 controversies on questions, which, if truth were once established on 

 a commonly recognised scientific basis, would vanish like the mists 

 of dawn, before the sun ? Such is the utter want of any conformity 

 in the use of a received terminology, that in this very work, we find 

 the term " Caucasian^ employed by M. Maury (p. 84,) as 

 equivalent to what he calls "the white race," and again by Dr. 

 Meigs, (pp. 219-25'7,) confessedly unscientifically, as the moBt 

 convenient one available under which to group such a miscellany as 

 Norwegians, Fins, Germans, English, Irish Celts, Sclaves, Jews, 

 Egyptian Eellahs, Thuggs, &c. Mr. Grliddon again has his own 

 views on it (p. 563,) as a term of mystifying vagueness in Ethno- 

 graphy ; or with the Count de Kechberg (p.p. 624, 625,) restores it to 

 the only definite meaning it seems capable of, as " the highest type" 

 among the multiform inhabitants of Mount Caucasus. What the 

 present recognized scientific value of the word is, we defy any one to 

 say. So with " Pelasgiari" '—if possible, a still looser and more 

 debateable term. " Dr. Morton," according to Dr. Meigs, " used the 

 term Pelasgic too comprehensively. The Circassians, Armenians, 

 and Persians, should not be placed in this group." In his estima- 

 tion, however, it appears that, " Ancient Romans, Greeks, Affghans, 

 and Grraeco-Egyptians," all properly class as Pelasgic. Dr. Latham 

 on the contrary, classes both Persians and Affghans under one 

 " Persian Stock;" the modern Greelc he would agree with Mr. G-lid- 

 don in recognizing as, to a great extent, Sclavonic. The seemingly 



