198 



SCIENCE. 



ferocious and cruel habits. Men are not necessarily 

 savage because they may use flint hatchets, cr because 

 they may point their arrows arcl their spears with bone. 

 Nevertheless, the condition of the Eskimo, although not 

 savage, is almost the type of the merely uncivilized con- 

 dition of Mankind. It is a condition in which not more 

 than a few families can ever live together, and in which, 

 therefore, large communities cannot be formed. A few 

 s ; mple and some very curious rules cf ownership are all 

 that can represent among them the great law-givirg in- 

 stinct which lives in Man. Agriculture cannot be prac- 

 ticed, nor even the pasturing of flocks and herds. With- 

 out fuel, beyond the oil which feeds their feeble lamps, 

 or a few stray legs of drift timber, the Eskimo can have 

 no access to the metals, which in such a country ccukl 

 not be reduced from their ores, even if these ores were 

 themselves obtainable. The useful arts are, therefore, 

 strictly limited to the devising and making of canoes and 

 weapons of the chase. There is no domestic animal 

 except the dog, and dogs too, like their masters, must 

 have been brought from elsewhere. These are all con- 

 ditions which exclude the first elements of what we un- 

 derstand by civilization. But every one of these condi- 

 tions must have been different with the progenitors of the 

 Eskimo. If they were immigrants into the regions within 

 the Arctic Circle, they must have come from the more 

 temperate regions of the South. They must have been 

 surrounded there by all the natural advantages of which 

 their descendants are now deprived. To what extent 

 these ancestors of the Eskimo may have profited by their 

 very different and more favored position, we cannot 

 know. They may have practiced such simple agriculture 

 as was practiced by the most ancient races which have 

 left their traces in the Swiss Lake dwellings. They may 

 have been nomads, living on their flocks and herds, as 

 the Laplanders and Siberians actually are who in the 

 Old World live in latitudes only a little farther south. 

 They may have been people who, like the ancient but 

 unknown Mound-builders in the Southern and Western 

 States of America, had developed a comparatively high 

 civilization. But one thing is certain, that they must 

 have lived a life wholly different from the life of the 

 Eskimo, and that they must have had completely different 

 habits. Whatever arts the father knew, suited to more 

 genial climates, could not fail to be forgotten by the 

 children, in a country where the practice of them was 

 impossible. 



The same question, therefore, which Darwin asks in 

 respect to the inhabitants of the extreme south of the 

 American continent, arises in respect to the inhabitants of 

 its extreme north — What can have induced any people to 

 travel along that continent in a direction more and more 

 inhospitable, and at last to settle in a country where 

 nearly one-half the year is night, and where, even during 

 the short summer, both sea and land are mainly occu- 

 pied by ice and snow ? 



But, again, we are reminded that there are other cases 

 of a similar kind. The African continent does not extend 

 so far south as to reach a severe southern latitude. In that 

 continent, accordingly, beyond the frequent occurrence of 

 deserts, there is nothing seriously to impede the migra- 

 tions of Man from its northern towards its southern ex- 

 tremity; nor is there anything there to subject them 

 when they had reached it to the worst conditions. Ac- 

 cordingly we do not find that the predominant native 

 races of Southern Africa rank low in the scale of human- 

 ity. Those among them, however, which are or were the 

 lowest in that scale, were precisely those who occupied 

 the most favorable portion of the country and are known 

 as Bushmen. Of these it is well ascertained that they are 

 not a distinct race, but of kindred origin with the Hot- 

 tentots, who were by no means so degraded. On the 

 whole, therefore, the question how men could ever have 

 been induced to live where we actually find them, does 

 not press for an answer so much in respect to any part 



ci the ccntinent of Africa, with the exception of a few 

 tribes whose present habitat is exce ptiorally unfavorable. 



There is, however, another case of difficulty in respect 

 to the distribution of Mankind, which in some respects is 

 even more remarkable than the case of the Fuegians, or 

 the case of the Esk ; mo. We have seen that the great 

 Asiatic continent, though it does not itself extend 

 beyond latitudes which are favorable to human settle- 

 ment, is practically prolonged through a continuous 

 chain of islands into the regions of Australasia. 

 Every part of those regions was found to be in- 

 habited when they were discovered by civilized man; 

 and it is universally admitted that the natives of Aus- 

 tralia, and the natives of Tasmania, are or were (for the 

 Tasmanians are now extinct) among the very lowest of 

 all the families of Man. Now the physical conditions 

 of the great islands of Australasia are in many re- 

 spects the most remarkable on the surface of the 

 globe. Their peculiar fauna and flora prove them to be 

 cf great antiquity as islands in the geological history of 

 the earth. That is to say — their beasts, and their birds, 

 and their vegetation are so widely separate from those 

 of all other regions, that during long ages of the total 

 time which has elapsed since they first appeared above 

 the ocean, they must have been as separate as they are 

 now from all other habitable lands. Their beasts are, 

 indeed, related — closely related — to forms which have 

 existed during certain epochs in many other portions of 

 the earth's surface. But those epochs are so distant, 

 that we are carried back in our search for creatures like 

 them to the times of the Secondary Rocks— to the hor- 

 izon of the Oolite. Speaking of the poverty and of the 

 extremely isolated character of the Australian Mammalia, 

 Mr. Wallace says : " This class affords us the most cer- 

 tain proofs that no part of the country has been united 

 to the Asiatic continent since the latter part of the Mez- 

 ozoic period of geolcgy." 2 Of the vast series of crea- 

 tures which elsewhere have been created, or born, or de- 

 veloped, since that epoch, including all the higher mem- 

 bers of the Mammalian Class, not one existed in Austral- 

 asia until they were introduced by Europeans. Among 

 the grasses there were none which by cultivation could 

 be developed into cereals. Among the beasts there was 

 not one w hich was capable of domestication. There were 

 no apes or monkeys; no oxen, antelopes, or deer; no 

 elephants, rhinoceroses, or pigs; no cats, wolves or 

 bears ; none even of the smaller civits or weasels : no 

 hedgehogs or shrews ; no hares, squirrels, or porcupines, 

 or dormice." 3 There was not even a native dog ; and 

 the only approach to, or representative of, that wonder- 

 ful animal, was a low, marsupial beast, which is a mere 

 biting machine, incapable of affection for a master, and 

 incapable even of recognizing the hand that feeds it. 

 In the whole of Australia, with the exception cf a few 

 mice, there was not one single mammal which did not 

 belong to this low Marsupial Class, whilst some others 

 belonged to a class still lower in the scale of organization, 

 the class called Monotremata. Strange forms astonished 

 our first explorers, such as the Ornithorynchus and the 

 Echidna — forms which combined features elsewhere 

 widely separated in the animal kingdom — the bills of 

 Birds, the spines of Porcupines, the fur of Otters, and the 

 feet of Moles. Nothing analogous to these relics of an 

 extinct fauna had been known to survive in any other 

 part of the world. Yet in the midst of this strange as- 

 semblage of creatures, without any representative of the 

 animals which elsewhere surround him, the familiar form 

 of Man appeared, low, indeed in his condition, but with 

 all the inalienable characteristics of his race. It is true, 

 that everywhere the gap which separates Man from the 

 lower animals is enormous. Nothing bridges, or comes 

 near to bridging it. It is a gap which has been well 



- "Australasia," by Alfred K. Wallace, p. 51. 

 3 "Australasia," by Alfred R. Wallace, p. 5:. 



