Caucasian of Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that all existing individuals of the species can be ranged around these types, or somewhere or other between them. Large numbers are doubtless the descendants of direct crosses in varying proportions between well-established extreme forms; for, notwithstanding opposite views formerly held by some authors on this subject, there is now abundant evidence of the wholesale production of new races in this way. Others may be the descendants of the primitive stock, before the strongly marked existing distinctions had taken place, and therefore present, though from a different cause from the last, equally generalized characters. In these cases it can only be by most carefully examining and balancing all characters however minute, and finding out in what direction the preponderance lies, that a place can be assigned to them. It can not be too often insisted on that the various groups of mankind, owing to their probable unity of origin, the great variability of individuals, and the possibility of all degrees of intermixture of races at remote or recent periods of the history of the species, have so much in common that it is extremely difficult to find distinctive characters capable of strict definition by which they may be differentiated. It is more by the preponderance of certain characters in a large number of members of a group, than by the exclusive or even constant possession of these characters in each of its members, that the group as a whole must be characterized.
Bearing these principles in mind, we may endeavor to formulate, as far as they have as yet been worked out, the distinctive features of the typical members of each of the three great divisions, and then show into what subordinate groups each of them seems to be divided.
To begin with the Ethiopian, Negroid, or Melanian, or "black" type. It is characterized by a dark, often nearly black, complexion; black hair, of the kind called "frizzly," or, incorrectly, "woolly," i. e., each hair being closely rolled up upon itself, a condition always associated with a more or less flattened or elliptical transverse section; a moderate or scanty development of beard; an almost invariably dolichocephalic skull; small and moderately retreating malar bones (mesopic face[1]); a very broad and flat nose, platyrhine in the skeleton; moderate or low orbits; prominent eyes; thick, everted lips; prognathous jaws; large teeth (macrodont); a narrow pelvis (index in the male 90 to 100); a long fore-arm (humero-radial index 80), and certain other proportions of the body and limbs which are being gradually worked out and reduced to numerical expression as material for so doing accumulates.
The most characteristic examples of the second great type, the Mongolian or Xanthous or "yellow," have a yellow or brownish complexion; coarse, straight hair, without any tendency to curl, and nearly
- ↑ Oldfield Thomas, in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute, January 13, 1885.
