ON THE RACE HISTORY AND FACIAL CHARACTERIS- 
TICS OF THE ABORIGINAL AMERICANS. 
By W. H. Holmes. 
[With 14 plates.] 
BIRTH OF THE RACE. 
Among the man}^ marvels that modern science has brought to light 
none is more wonderful and none less welcome than that which 
defines the place of man in the scheme of nature — his origin and his 
kinship, physical and intellectual, with the whole vast range of 
living things. It is made clear that the several races of man to-day 
represent the culminating stages of a branching series which con- 
nects back through simpler and still more simple ancestral forms to 
the primary manifestations of life in the rem^ote past. 
As outlined by the researches of the naturalist, the story of the 
becoming of the race is simply told. It is observed that the forms 
taken by the evolving life series were necessarily due largely to the 
environmental conditions under which they developed — that a world 
of waters molded forms fitted to live and move in the water, that a 
world of land developed distinct types accommodated to the condi- 
tions of the land, and that an environment comprising both land 
and water brought into existence types adjusted to both land and 
water. On the land there were further adaptations to special con- 
ditions of the particular environment. The inhabitants of the plains 
differed essentially from the inhabitants of the forests, for while the 
one employed the four members of the body in locomotion, the other 
used the feet to walk and the hands to climb and to do ; and here is 
found the point of departure in the shaping up of the special being 
called man. Fitness for higher things was determined by the forest, 
for life among the branches and the vines developed the grasping 
hand, and the hand made man a possibility. The hands alone, how- 
ever, were not responsible for the full result, since had the race con- 
tinued to dwell in the forest man would to-day be merely a simple, 
undeveloped denizen of the woodland. The feet made the conquest 
of the earth possible. It is assumed that by reason of some unde- 
termined contingency, such as great increase in population, the de- 
pletion of the forest food supply, or other gradually developing 
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