MAN. 
ttie causes just mentioned, it may not be 
amiss to advert to the following rules : — 
1. The greater the number of causes of de- 
generation, and the longer they continue to 
act on the same species, the more obviously 
■will that species deviate from its original 
formation. Man therefore must be ex- 
pected to vary more than any animal, since 
he has been subjected from his very origin 
to the united agencies of climate, food, and 
way of life. 2. A cause, possessing in itself 
sufficient efficacy, may be weakened by the 
concurrence of other conditions, tending to 
diminish its operations. Thus, countries 
placed under the same parallel of latitude 
have very different temperatures ; and the 
effects of situation on the human subject 
are varied according as it is more or less 
elevated, or as it may be influenced by the 
neighbourhood of the sea, marshes, moun- 
tains, or woods, &c. 3. The source of de- 
generation is often to he sought for, not in 
any immediate cause, but in the mediate in- 
fluence of some more latent agency. Thus, 
the dark colour of the skin may -not arise 
from the direct action of the sun, but from 
its more remote, but very signal, influence 
on the hepatic system. 4. These indirect 
and mediate causes may be so very' obscurey 
.that we cannot form even any probable 
conjecture as to their nature; yet we seem 
to be warranted'in referring those pheno- 
mena of degeneration, which hitherto ap- 
pear enigmatical, to the operation of such 
unknown powers. Thus w'e must explain 
tire constant national forms of crania, 
colours of the eyes, &c. 
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE. 
The colour of the skin forms a very con- 
stant hereditary character, most clegrly in- 
fluenced by that of both parents in tjie hy- 
brid offspring of different varieties, having a 
close and nearly uniform relation to that of 
the hair and iris, and indeed to the whole 
temperament of the individual ; and foi' all 
these reasons attracting most immediately 
the attention of the cur.sory observer. 
The seat of this colour is in a thin mucous 
• stratum, interposed between the cuticle, 
or dead surfiice of the body, and the true 
skin, and called rete mucosum, or rete 
Malpighii. The native reddish white of the 
real skin appears through this, which is very 
thin and almost colourless, -in the white 
races of mankind. But in the darker va- 
rieties the rete mucosum is much thicker, 
and contains throughout its substance a 
black pigment; while the cuticle and ctitis 
deviate but little from the colour which 
they have in fair persons. 
The different varieties of mankind ex- 
hibit every possible shade, between the 
snowy whiteness of the European female 
and the jet black of the Negro. Although 
none of these gradations obtain so univer- 
sally, as to be found in all the individuals of 
any particular nation, nor are so peculiar to 
one race, as not to occur occasionally in 
other widely differfent ones, the national va- 
rieties of colour may be referred on the 
whole with sufficient accuracy to the five 
following principal classes'. 
1. White, to which redness of the cheeks 
is almost wholly confined, being observed 
at least very rarely, if at all, in the other 
varieties. This obtains in most of the Eu- 
ropean nations, in the western Asiatics, as 
the Turks, Georgians, Circassians, Mingre- 
lians, Armenians, Persians, &c. and in the 
inhabitants of the northern part of Africa. ' 
2. Yellow, or olive (a middle tint be- 
tween that of wheat and the boiled quince, 
or dried lemon peel), which characterises 
the Mongolian tribes, usually called, toge- 
ther with the inhabitants of great part of 
Asia, Tartars. , 
3. Red, or copper colour (bronze, Er. an 
obscure orange, or rusty iron colour, not 
unlike the bark of the cinnamon tree) almost 
confined to the Americans. 
4. Tawhy, or brown, (ftasand, Fr. a mid- 
dle tint between that of fresh mahogany 
and cloves or chesuuts) which belongs to 
the. Malays, and the inhabitants of the 
South Sea islands. 
5. Black, in various shades from the sooty 
colour, or tawmy-black, to that of pitch, or 
jet-black. This is W'ell known to prevail very 
extensively in the continent of Africa: it is 
found also in other very different and distant 
varieties of the human race, mingled with 
the national colour, as in the natives of 
Brazil, California, India, and some South 
Sea islands, as New Holland and New 
Guinea. In describing these five varieties 
we fix on the most strongly marked tints 
between which there is every conceivable 
iutermediate shade of colour. The oppo- 
site extremes run into each other by the 
nicest and most delicate gradations, in every 
other particular in which the human species 
differs. This forms no slight objection to 
the hypothesis of different species. For, on 
that supposition, we cannot define the num- 
ber of species, nor can we point out the 
boundaries which divide them; whereas in 
animals, which most resemble each other, 
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