March 12, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



245 



A little to the westward are other smaller and 

 more easily accessible ice-masses, which plainly 

 show a recent retreat ; and two miles west of the 

 summit one comes into view of the greatest of 

 the visible Selkirk glaciers. It is overlooked by 

 the stately monolith of Syndicate Peak, and the ice 

 comes curving down to within a mile of the rail- 

 way, feeding a copious stream. It is only about 

 a thousand feet above the level of the rails ; and, 

 when a trail has been cut through the thickets in 

 the ravine, it will be very easily reached, though 

 one should no more attempt to go upon it without 

 proper ice-creepers, ropes, etc., than he would in 

 the Swiss Alps. I predict that the Agassiz glacier, 

 if I may so name it, will be as famous an object 

 of adventurous pilgrimage in a few years as any 

 in Europe. Ernest Ingersoll. 



THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN RACES AXD 

 TYPES. 



One of the most inexplicable subjects in the 

 evolution of man has been his racial persistency. 

 The teachings of Agassiz are yet familiar, and the 

 thorough and abundant testimony of Morton, 

 Nott, and Gliddon has demonstrated the per- 

 manency of the great races of mankind. The 

 peculiar physiognomy of the Jew stands out as 

 clearly in the early Egyptian records as at the 

 present day. Food, 'climate, the most diverse en- 

 vironmental conditions, all appear to cause but 

 little modification in racial type. The evidence 

 from his earliest known periods of existence 

 throws but little light upon his immediate origin, 

 and the opponents of evolution have long found 

 great satisfaction in the few proofs of lower 

 affinity that his fossil remains present. Certain- 

 ly there must have been factors hi his earliest 

 development that we have not yet taken into 

 account. When and where did the African, the 

 Caucasian, the Malayan races first become fixed, 

 and why have the causes that long ago led to 

 then differentiation ceased to be active? An 

 answer to this question, deserving consideration, 

 has lately been attempted by Moritz Wagner 

 (Kosmos, 1886, p. 23). 



It has long been recognized that one of the 

 strongest factors in the artificial production of 

 new varieties is in - and - in breeding, — the re- 

 peated crossing, within narrow limits, of the pro- 

 geny of related parents. It is rarely in any other 

 way that the impression of peculiarities can be 

 combined and not antagonized in the offspring. 

 All breeders or growers are aware that the or- 

 ganism, be it vegetable or animal, acquires with 

 every such repetition greater plasticity and capa- 

 bility of change, and that it can arrive at a con- 



siderable degree of differentiation only when free 

 crossing is hindered or prevented for a sufficient 

 length of time for these variations to become 

 fixed, and not dissipated. In nature, strong proof 

 of the same law is afforded by the faunal 

 and floral peculiarities of regions isolated by nat- 

 ural barriers. The Galapagos and the Hawaiian 

 islands, notwithstanding the uniformity of cli- 

 mates and general conditions, show striking diver- 

 sities in animal and plant life among themselves. 

 — the result of crossing among nearly related 

 forms. Isolation, from whatever cause it may be 

 due. throughout all animal and vegetable life, 

 brings almost inevitably variation, due to the 

 limitation of crossing, and the consequent fixa- 

 tion of characters. 



But, in both of these respects, man has, in all 

 his known history, been strikingly at variance with 

 all other members of both the animal and vege- 

 table kingdoms. In him alone, among all living- 

 creatures, exists the instinctive aversion to cross- 

 ing between near blood-relations, — an aversion 

 that predominates in every grade of civilization, 

 from the cultivated races to the Eskimo, Hotten- 

 tot, or Australian. Indeed, among the lowest 

 tribes, the aversion is often strongest, and incest 

 not unfrequently is punished by death. Most 

 assuredly, man will not form an exception to a law 

 so potent for change among other animals ; and 

 we see, in this custom of marriage between those 

 unrelated, the most important factor in the pro- 

 duction of varieties removed, and we can under- 

 stand the difficulty of the formation of new races. 

 The very acceptance of man's origin recognizes 

 the certainty that some time in his development 

 this instinct has been acquired. In the earliest 

 period it did not exist, and he was then subject to 

 the same laws of variation as the ape and the dog. 

 It was to this period that the chief divisions of 

 mankind evidently date. 



Every thing goes to indicate that man's origin 

 extends back far into the pliocene age ; and evi- 

 dently in his early stages he differed little, in his 

 habits, from wild animals of the forest. Without 

 clothes and habitation, he depended upon the free 

 gifts of nature for food and shelter, without 

 family instincts, and, what seems to be a neces- 

 sary concomitant, without any sexual aversions 

 whatever. With the great climatic changes of 

 the glacial period, all this was changed. The 

 struggle for existence became bitter : sustenance, 

 shelter, and clothes had then to be acquired by 

 the exercise of brain and hand. Migrations to 

 the most favored and isolated locations were the 

 inevitable result, and the necessity of protection 

 of offspring became the contingency of existence. 

 Family life took the place of more brutal instincts. 



