such as those of Europe, may have been brought about by hybridity, is still, however, a task of almost hopeless intricacy. Among the boldest attempts to account for distinctly-marked populations as resulting from the inter mixture of two races, are Professor Huxley's view that the Hottentots are hybrid between the Bushmen and the Negroes, and his more important suggestion, that the Melanochroic peoples of Southern Europe are of mixed
Xanthochroic and Australioid stock.
The problem of ascertaining how the small number of races, distinct enough to be called primary, can have assumed their different types, has been for years the most disputed field of anthropology, the battle-ground of the rival schools of monogenists and polygenists. The one has claimed all mankind to be descended from one original stock, and generally from a single pair; the other has contended for the several primary races being separate species of independent origin. It is not merely as a question of natural history that the matter has been argued. Biblical authority has been appealed to, mostly on the side of the monogenists, as recording the descent of mankind from a single pair. (See, for example, Horne's Introduction to the Scriptures; the Speaker s Commentary, Gen. i.) On the other hand, however, the polygenists not less confidently claim passages from which they infer the existence of non-Adamite, as well as Adamite races of man. (See, for example, R. S. Poole, Genesis of the Earth and Man.) Nor have political considerations been without influence, as where, for instance, one American school of ethnologists have been thought to have formed, under the bias of a social system recognising slavery, their opinion that the Negro and the white man are of different species. (See Morton, Crania Americana; Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind.) Of the older school of scientific monogenists, Blumenbach and Prichard are eminent representatives, as is Quatrefages of the more modern. The great problem of the monogenist theory is to explain by what course of variation the so different races of man have arisen from a single stock. In ancient times little difficulty was felt in this, authorities such as Aristotle and Vitruvius seeing in climate and circumstance the natural cause of racial differences, the Ethiopian having been blackened by the tropical sun, &c. Later and closer observations, however, have shown such influences to be, at any rate, far slighter in amount and slower in operation than was once supposed. M. de Quatrefages brings forward (Unité de l'Espèce Humaine, Paris, 1861, ch. 13) his strongest arguments for the variability of races under change of climate, &c. (action du milieu), instancing the asserted alteration in complexion, constitution, and character of Negroes in America, and Englishmen in America and Australia. But although the reality of some such modification is not disputed, especially as to stature and constitution, its amount is not enough to upset the counter-proposition of the remarkable permanence of type displayed by races ages after they have been transported to climates extremely different from that of their former home. More over, physically different races, such as the Bushmen and Negroids in Africa, show no signs of approximation under the influence of the same climate; while, on the other hand, the coast tribes of Tierra del Fuego and forest tribes of tropical Brazil continue to resemble one another, in spite of extreme differences of climate and food. Mr Darwin, than whom no naturalist could be more competent to appraise the variation of a species, is moderate in his estimation of the changes produced on races of man by climate and mode of life within the range of history (Descent of Man, part i. ch. 4 and 7). The slightness and slowness of variation in human races having become known, a great difficulty of the monogenist theory was seen to lie in the shortness of the chronology with which it was formerly associated. Inasmuch as several well-marked races of mankind, such as the Egyptian, Phoenician, Ethiopian, &c., were much the same three or four thousand years ago as now, their variation from a single stock in the course of any like period could hardly be accounted for without a miracle. This difficulty was escaped by the polygenist theory, which, till a few years since, was gaining ground. (See Pouchet, Plurality of the Human Race, 2nd ed., 1864, Introd.) Two modern views have, however, intervened which have tended to restore, though under a new aspect, the doctrine of a single human stock. One has been the recognition of man having existed during a vast period of time (see sec. IV., Antiquity of Man), which made it more easy to assume the continuance of very slow natural variation as having differenced even the white man and the Negro among the descendants of a common progenitor. The other view is that of the evolution or development of species, at the present day so strongly upheld among naturalists. It does not follow necessarily from a theory of evolution of species that mankind must have descended from a single stock, for the hypothesis of development admits of the argument, that several simious species may have culminated in several races of man (Vogt, Lectures on Man, London, 1864, p. 463). The general tendency of the development theory, however, is against constituting separate species where the differences are moderate enough to be accounted for as due to variation from a single type. Mr Darwin's summing up of the evidence as to unity of type throughout the races of mankind is as distinctly a monogenist argument as those of Blumenbach, Prichard, or Quatrefages—
“Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as iu colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet, if their whole organisation he taken into consideration, they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant, or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. Now, when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes, and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor, who was, thus endowed ; and, consequently, that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.”—(Darwin, Descent of Man, part i. ch. 7.)
remained comparatively fixed in type during the long period of history, such as the white man and the Negro, should have, in even a far longer period, passed by variation from a common original. Mr Wallace's view is substantially that the remotely ancient representatives of the human species, being as yet animals too low in mind to have developed those arts of maintenance and social ordinances by which man holds his own against influences from climate and circumstance, were in their then wild state much more plastic than now to external nature ; so that “natural selection” and other causes met with but feeble resistance in forming the permanent varieties or races of man, whose complexion and structure still remain fixed in their descendants. (See Wallace, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 319.) On the whole, it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity of mankind now stands on a firmer basis than in previous ages. It would be premature to judge how far the problem of the origin
of races may be capable of exact solution ; but the ex-