236 
REPORT- 1847 . 
well-known fact, that the varieties of the human species existing in thegffjl 
southern continents are much more similar in physical characters to the naiite 
races of the torrid zone than any of the aboriginal people inhabiting ik 
northern regions of the world. 
I have briefly touched upon the principal branches of the science of wtait 
which aflbni j'csources for the cultivation of cflmology, ami it now rcraw* 
for me to take some notice of the aids which history and archjeology «*• 
tribute in promotion of the same inquirk-s. 
Those hUtorical investigations which are alone fitted to 
searches of the ethnologist must compass a wide field, and go far ber ^ 
the infoniiation that can be collected ulono from the writings of ancient 
modern annalists. Much indeed is to be found In the works of such 
as Herodotus, Aristotle, Diodorus, Ca'sar, Pliny, Strabo and Tacitus 
useful in investigating the history of those nations in Europe and Ahs * 
were within the sphere of the knowledge of tbo Greeks and 
all such information would be not only confined, hut fragmentary^ 
jointed, without some more comprehensive means of illustraUon that J 
serve to bring the various notices scattered through ancient 
some distinct relation wdth tribes of people actually known to us. , J . 
collect all the different lights that can be brought to bear on the 
nations, udiotljer from the testimony of ancient writers, or from 
customs and institutions—from old popular traditions, poetry, ^ 
from thi! K-niains of ancient art, sculpture, architecture, 
from scpulchnil relies discovered in many countries, consisting of 
taining embalmed bodies, or more often the mere skulls and skeletoiu 
ancient inhabitants, which furnish the most authentic testimony 
be procured as to the physical characters of various races of people, 
all these, there is another source of information more extensively s'" 
than any of them,— 1 allude to the historv of languages and their ^ 
The liistory of mankind is not destined, like the fundamental 
geology, to be dug out of the bowels of the earth, though sotw m 
ancients thought otlicrwise, if we may judge from the abundance 
tures and inscriptions with which they covered the sides of cavern®. , 
documeuU have however been discovered in various countries ben j 
soil, which have brought evidence of historical facts otherwise unknn 
may allude for an example to the great collections of silver 
coinage of the early caliphs of Uagdad, which have been dug up^w 
places in the neighbourhood of the Baltic, marking out the pa* ® ^ 
tensive traffic between the east and the north, at a time when 
people of Europe are generally supposed to have been in a state ® ^ 
barbarism. But the dwcoveries most interesting in relation toe 
are those of sepulchral remains, which in various regions of the no ^ 
preserve<l authentic records of the physical characters and aris o ■ 
ancient races. I hardly need allude to the. discoveries in 
fhebaid — a vast sepulchre, where the successive geofrations of ^ j 
turies lie embalmed beneath llieirdry preserving soil, Lfoit* 
fated time, now long since past, when thev were to be sumiaonea 
tribunal ol Serapis. Another African race exists only iu mummic®. 
to the insular Guanclies, the ancient inhabitants of the rf' 
who now, falsifying this name, exist only in the- caverns 
European nutscums, to which they have been transported 
,1 '^nst wildernesses iu the northern regions of Asia, along 
■■ -~Si^ 
the Irtish and beyond the remote Jenisei, innumerable tumuli are 
containing the remains of ancient art and long-extinct races of w 
SS' 
