THE YELLOW RACES. 1 



By Dr. E. T. Hamy. 



Last year's course was mainly devoted to the study of that large 

 group of peoples which are collectively known by the name of Yellow 

 Races, although their color forms a chromatic scale, which at times is 

 perceptibly removed from what is properly called yellow. This group 

 of races, this main stem (trunk), to borrow a happy expression imported 

 into science by M. de Quatrefages, is, numerically speaking, the most 

 important of all those the great whole of which might be considered 

 as the human forest. In fact, the number of yellow men could not, 

 properly speaking, be estimated at less than 540,000,000; this is more 

 than one-third of the whole number of mankind, 3 and I ought surely 

 not curtail the study of so important a fraction of the human family, 

 although I must acknowledge that the precise facts concerning the 

 yellow races are as yet far from sufficient. 



With a very few exceptions, our anatomical data are in fact only 

 isolated documents. Our numerical observations, our special photo- 

 graphs, are few in number, and the conclusions drawn from the 

 examination and the description of such indifferent materials must 

 consequently be looked upon as eminently provisional only. 



Such as I had formulated them quite recently, I have been compelled, 

 after many fruitless efforts, to present them to you once more in this 

 course of instruction, where one after the other, and in systematic 

 order, each human group becomes the object of special inquiry, founded 

 above all upon scientific investigation. And I have been very fortun ate 

 to find that, on the whole, my conclusions are not opposed by any 

 opinion maintained elsewhere, and that, making full allowance for out- 

 ward appearances, they still have nothing that could possibly shock 

 the professional Orientalists, who are accustomed to use for the most 

 ordinary purposes only linguistic characters. 



The first observation which we have been called upon to make, as we 

 enter into this subject, has reference to the relative antiquity of the 



1 Opening lecture of the course on Anthropology, held at the Museum on March 23, 

 1895. Translated from L' Anthropologic, 1895, Tome VI, No. 3. 



2 H. Wagner and A. Supan estimate the population of the earth at ahout 1,480,- 

 000,000. (Die Bevolkerung der Erde, VIII, Gotha, 1891, 4to, p. xi.) 



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