OUR RACE AND ITS ORIGIN. 
67 
There are many in the present day who deny that our 
race originated with a single pair. The great diversity of 
color and form found to exist in various parts of the globe, 
lead some to suppose there were at least three original pairs, 
others again affirm those to be insufficient. 
At one of the meetings of the Ethnological Society, a 
paper on this subject was read by Mr. Crawfurd, in which 
the assertion was made, “ that there are distinct varieties 
in the human species, as in those of other animals, and 
that it is impossible by change of climate, or food, or cir- 
cumstances, to produce those marked differences which 
are perceptible amongst mankind ; that he considered there 
are sixty varieties of the human race/' and so must have as 
many original pairs to begin with. One thing at least is very 
evident in this opinion, that he is no convert to Darwin’s 
theory of natural selection, and the passing of one species 
into another, as he evidently implies his belief in the human 
race having been transmitted from its first parents to the 
present day unaltered. 
It is not contrary, however, to scripture, that the present 
race of man began with four original pairs. When the an- 
tediluvian world perished, the inmates of the ark became 
the parents of the existing families. 
But this will not satisfy the President of the Ethnological 
Society. He affirms, “ it is impossible for a negro to become 
white, or a white man to become black, by change of food or 
climate ; and the few instances of albinos that are known can 
only be regarded as monstrosities.” Supposing, however, 
such a statement to be true, what does it amount to beyond 
declaring that one of the primeval pairs must have been 
white and another black, and that these extremes of color 
cannot change, which is by no means agreeable with ex- 
perience, as he himself strangely acknowledges in apparent 
contradiction of his own assertion, by mentioning some 
curious cases of monstrosities, such as of a man who had 
quills like a porcupine, and another who was completely 
covered with hair, whose children also possessed the same 
strange peculiarity, 
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