29 
present geographical area of the Negro nations proper. For, 
turnino* westward toward the table-lands of the Soudan, they 
would °still retain their Negro type, and yet be physically 
improved by that location, just as we now find their remote 
descendants to be ; while, pushing out further westward, and 
then following the course of the Niger and its tributaries, and 
other swampy rivers, they would again have a tendency to 
degenerate, appearing at last in their most exaggerated 
tvpical form, just as we meet with their posterity throughout 
those parts in the present day. 
56. As to any speculations upon the origin of those vaster 
nations, which appear to come in mainly as a cross between 
the Negroes proper and the Coptic, Abyssinian, Berber, or 
other northern races — (I mean the Kaffirs, the Gallas, the 
Congoes, and the natives of the Mozambique coast, &c.) this 
is not the proper time to speak. Suffice it to observe that 
the inquiry, although subtle and complicated, is deeply in- 
teresting; nor is it without an indirect bearing on the present 
question, inasmuch as most of the West Africa idioms are, in 
the main, allied to the Berber on the one side and to the 
Kaffir language on the other.* 
57. I offer these remarks on a difficult subject with much 
diffidence, yet with considerable confidence, believing that, 
while they are only based upon mere possibilities and pro- 
babilities, drawn from the laws of analogy and induction, and 
offer no actual demonstration or positive proof of the theory 
I design them to enforce, they are, nevertheless, worthy of 
attention, and will serve, in some measure, as a useful con- 
tribution towards the solution of our proposed problem. It 
is not in the nature of the case that any absolute proof of a 
theory on this question can be established. The whole dis- 
cussion is a mere inquiry into the balance of reasonable 
probabilities ; and therefore those who believe in the origin 
of the Negro race by means of a separate creation, or of 
miraculous judgment (and, I may add, of development from 
the monkey) must, of course, undertake to show that there 
are insuperable scientific difficulties in the way of the theory 
here advocated. I believe one object of the Victoria Institute 
is to show that those who are firm believers in the inspiration 
of the records of Scripture are not debarred thereby fiom. 
prosecuting their researches into any branch of . scientific 
inquiry with the utmost fulness and freedom, conscious that, 
although, as in Galileo's case, their traditional interpretation 
* See a note by Mr. Morris, in his edition of Prichard’s Natural History 
of Man , voi. i. p. 323. 
