ASSIMILATIVE COLOURATION. 399 
It is true that assimilative colouration seems to have little 
modified the colour of indigenous races, even in Africa, if we take 
a comprehensive view of the whole area. But we must not forget 
that men have so often migrated from their original birthplaces, 
and more than that, much mixture has taken place. Emin Pasha 
remarks on “ the intermingling of separate tribes and peoples in 
Central Africa consequent upon war, plundering raids, dividing 
of the spoil in women, slavery and exchange of slaves, and in a 
much less degree on intermarriage’’; and further, “that it is 
almost impossible to obtain skulls of really pure race.” He also 
observes: ‘‘ Whether the great variation in the colour of the skin 
observable among all Negro tribes is to be attributed to these 
mixed relationships, I do not venture yet to decide.” * 
The relationship between the surface hue of the geological 
floor on which the primary races of men may have developed 
their individuality of colour, and the prevalent tints of those 
races, has been little studied, though that investigation might 
also throw much light on the areas where racial segregation 
established those divisions which in any other group of animals 
would at least be considered specific. ven in our own country 
this old connection between land and man has been pointed out 
by the late Prof. Ramsay: “Thus it happens that the oldest 
tribes now inhabiting our country are to be found among 
the old palzozoic mountains, which, composed of the most 
ancient of our geological formations, and rising up into the 
highest grounds, must have been the first parts of the British 
islands to rise above the waters during the last elevation of the 
land.” + This observation is doubtless capable of more universal 
application, and human assimilative colouration might prove a 
reasonable hypothesis if we could only trace the early dispersal 
of our species in a scientific manner and spirit, without the aid 
of a Hebraistic ‘‘ Tower of Babel,” or the view once advanced by 
ethnologists of a Caucasian nursery based on a still earlier attempt 
to locate the “Garden of Eden.” The boldest of new theories 
are at least not more grotesque than the explanations of quite 
recent times, and whereas the last were believed to be final, the 
first are advanced only as propositions for future verification or 
* ¢Hmin Pasha in Central Africa,’ p. 197. 
+ Cf. Extracts from Lectures—‘ Anthropological Review,’ vol. i. p. 486. 
