and future Prospects. 5495 



BufFon, always rising to great ideas, said that man was the same 

 everywhere; to this some have since added that a continuous fertility 

 of all the breeds, races, species or varieties, is proof of the identity of 

 his physical and moral nature.* This I denied long ago, and most 

 American naturalists and anatomists now admit the correctness of my 

 view. It is, then, an open question. Certain West India islands show 

 an alarming tendency to revert to a black population ; the white blood 

 and the Mulatto must there be becoming extinct. The aboriginal 

 Peruvian and Mexican gain, it is said, unmistakeably on the Spanish 

 race; the successive conquering races of Northern Africa have all 

 become extinct or nearly so, and the Tuaric and the Tibboo, and 

 Kabyte or Boobas, return to their primitive abodes. We have no 

 where on the earth any mixed breed of men ; all the races are just as 

 easily to be recognised now as they were in the time of the Pharoahs, 

 who lived long before the Mosaic era; you may see them on the 

 Etruscan monuments ; it is a historic fact, of which Cuvier made great 

 use in his theory of successive creations and fixity of species. If the 

 fact be admissible as of value when applied to animals, it must be 

 equally so when applied to man ; and even if it be asserted that the 

 races of men are breeds and not species, we only add another Natural 

 History enigma to those already existing, by giving to breeds a per- 

 petuity and a continuous productive energy, which we know they do 

 not possess. When breeds of animals are transported to foreign 

 climates they invariably alter if allowed to roam at large ; man does 

 not do so. The Hollander transplanted to Southern Africa, to Java, 

 or to Northern America, undergoes no change morally or physically; 

 it is the same with the Celt. If these be breeds, they have a strange 

 tenacity and fixity of character amounting almost to what we usually 

 term specific. The Gipsies have for centuries wandered over Europe 

 and Asia, exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons, but they 

 remain precisely as they were originally ; of the Jews we need say 

 nothing; they speak for themselves, attesting the indomitable cha- 

 racter of race, morally and physically, under every government and 

 every climate. It is the same with all the races of men. 



The specialization or specification of beings is the question we 

 have just considered. By some it is referred to a first cause, and con- 

 sidered as primitive, eternal and fixed. f Those who maintain such 

 views must also be prepared to deny the unity of life, of the organic 

 world, the unity of the organization of animal beings, and, in a word, 

 the dependance of the present organic world on the past. But, strange 

 to "say, they do not ; on the contrary, they seem to think all these 

 hypotheses compatible with each other. Let us follow them through 

 their argument, if they really have one, and endeavour to ascertain 

 their object and views, and especially what ideas they draw from Em- 

 bryology, that science on which, in all probability, the future progress 

 in Zoology mainly depends. The formation of beings is a question 

 calculated to try the consistency of their opinions and their reconcile- 



* FltUi'ens. f Id. 



