the household of man.' The varieties into which the species of dogs, cattle, sheep, and goats, and the species of vegetables and fruit have diverged, are much more numerous and different than is the case with man. But if we find that the most remarkable power of variation exists in those kinds of organisms which are capable of the widest extension on the earth, we may, according to this analogy, expect to find that the limits wherein variation is possible in man are very wide. For, as Peschel says, the spot on earth is still to be found which cannot be inhabited or at least visited by some tribe." 2 "It is undeniable," says Waitz, "that the same races of men can live successively in very different climates, and that they have in some cases done so, but this is the case with very few animals; further, that the whole mode of life and all the outward conditions to which the same tribe is subjected may alter in the most complete manner, and often do so alter, but not so with animals; lastly, that the same race can go through very different stages of spiritual culture, and does go through them, but not so the animals. Therefore, as the circumstances and conditions under which man can exist are so much wider than those under which any one species of animal can exist, we see that there is no want of correspondence with the laws of nature, if the variability of his outward form is less limited than that of animals.

We must, no doubt, suppose that men spread themselves over the different lands of the earth gradually and very slowly, so that the climatic differences were never marked. But if we assume this, the process

8

of

1 Prichard, Researches, i. 339. 2 Volkerkunde, p. 21. Anthropologie, i. 213.

"If

acclimatization is quite conceivable. Peschel says, the transitions to other climates take place gradually and at long intervals, there is no doubt that the same race of men may people every zone of the earth. For no one denies that the Hindoo of high caste, whether his home is in Bengal, in Madras, or in Scinde, or any other hot climate, is of Arian descent, just as much as the northern inhabitants of Iceland; and that the unknown ancestors of both must have inhabited a common home. All ethnologists are agreed that the aborigines of America, with, at most, the exception of the Eskimos, form one race, and this one race succeeds in adapting itself to all the climatic conditions, from the Arctic circle to the Equator, and again to the 50th degree of latitude. We find Chinese in Maimatschin on the Siberian frontier, where the mean temperature is below freezing-point, and the thermometer falls to -40 degrees Reaumür in winter; and also on the island of Singapore, which is almost under the Equator."

The observations which have been made as to the origin and inheritance of bodily qualities, serve in some measure to show us how the differences between the separate races and peoples may have been formed during this gradual distribution of men over the earth.

It has been ascertained that these characteristics when once, from whatever cause, established, often become hereditary, even when they are very remarkable and almost unnatural; as, e.g., six fingers on the hand, six toes on the foot, horny growths on the skin, etc.2

1 Volkerkunde, p. 21. Quatrefages, Rapport, etc. p. 206.

2 Prichard, Op. cit. i. 347. Waitz, Anthropologie, i. 90. "Gratio Kelleia, the Maltese, who was born with six fingers on each hand, and the like number of toes to each of his feet, married when he was twenty

Such cases as these make it at least appear conceivable, that if a bodily peculiarity has once originated, it may become lasting, if throughout several generations those individuals who possess it intermarry with one another only, and if the conditions which may influence it are favourable to its preservation.1 At any rate, as Waitz says, they show us a way in which the origin of different races is possible.

two years of age, and as I suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in

Malta, he married an ordinary five-fingered person. The result of that marriage was four children; the first, who was christened Salvator, had six fingers and six toes, like his father; the second was George, who had five fingers and toes, but one of them was deformed, showing a tendency to variation; the third was André, he had five fingers and five toes quite perfect; the fourth was a girl, Marie, she had five fingers and five toes, but the thumbs were deformed, showing a tendency towards the sixth. These children. . . all married, and of course it happened that they all married five-fingered and five-toed persons. Now, let us see what were the results. Salvator had four children, they were two boys, a girl, and another boy; the first two boys and the girl were six-fingered and sixtoed, like their grandfather; the fourth boy had only five fingers and five toes. George had two girls with six fingers and six toes; one girl with six fingers and five toes on the right side, and with five fingers and five toes on the left, and one boy with five fingers and five toes. The third, André, had many children, whose hands and feet were all regularly developed. Marie four, a boy with six toes, the others normal. Reaumür narrates this case only as far as the third generation. Had the cousins intermarried, a six-fingered variety of the human race might have been set up."-Huxley, On our Knowledge, p. 95 seq. Darwin, The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, ii. 4 seq.

1 "The oftener like pairs with like without any foreign intermixture, the longer will the type to which the breeding individuals belong be preserved. If we take a brood of parents as nearly alike as possible, and if their progeny pair together again, and this interbreeding continues within the family, we shall get a breed, a race, whose members will preserve the type of the original ancestors, whatever the individual peculiarities may be. Sometimes when the form-giving type is once fixed through a series of generations in the members of a family, even the intermixture of a foreign element will not suffice to eradicate it, and the intruding element will be absorbed by the old ancestral one. This no doubt explains the fact that in many royal houses the type of the family is preserved in an astonishing manner, in spite of alliances with other houses, as is the case with the Bourbons, and also with several German royal houses."-Müller, Physiologie, ii. 770.

An English traveller1 describes a family in Hauran, on the eastern shore of the Jordan, in which, although the parents were white, and had no negro among their ancestors, the children were black. Here the external conditions were favourable to the preservation of this peculiarity; for the Arabian population of this region is distinguished by having a darker skin, a flatter face, and crisper hair than any other tribe of their race. It is said also that the opposite sometimes takes place, and that white children are born amongst the negro tribes, and that the tendency to such exceptions is inherited.2

No doubt in this respect climate and other external conditions have an influence. Even Burmeister admits that climate and the sun have a certain influence on the colour of the skin. "It is said that individuals of the African race do become paler in the temperate zones, if they have lived for several generations under the influence of more slanting sun's rays, although they never become as white as Europeans. On the other hand, white nations become darker under a tropical sun, but they do not become black in Africa, or red in America; their darker colour is of a peculiar shade, easily distinguishable, it is simply an intensification of the original national colour. It is for this reason that in the same nation the noble and rich classes seem to be lighter coloured than the poorer classes; for the former expose themselves less to the sun, and shelter themselves artificially from its rays,

1 Cf. Wiseman, On the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, p. 195.

2 Prichard, i. 368.

whereas the poor man is always exposed to them without shelter, and feels their whole effect. In nations where differences of class do not exist, the effects thus produced by them on the outward appearance disappear, and all the individuals of the Papuan race are equally dark, just as all the individuals of the Botokudi are equally reddish brown; in Mexicans and Peruvians, however, shades of colour were formerly and are still distinguished, similar to those which an attentive observer may notice any day amongst ourselves in Europe. They are the consequences of a descent from the better class of families or of the mode of life, like so many of the differences which result from a higher spiritual development.1

Observations by the microscope have taught us the following facts about the situation of the colouring matter. The human skin consists of two layers, the outer skin (epidermis) and the under skin (cutis). The former is divided into the cuticle (stratum corneum) and the stratum mucosum or rete malpighii. The cutis and the cuticle are alike in all races, the differences only appear in the cells of the stratum mucosum, which are filled with a granular colouring matter. According as these colour cells are confined to the bottom of the stratum muscosum, or become thicker, and in some few cases even stretch up into the cuticle, is the colour of the skin lighter or darker. Certain parts of the body are more darkly coloured in every man, as the warts; freckles, moles, and stains in different parts of the body are produced by the

1 Geschichte der Schöpfung, p. 507 (634). Cf. Waitz, Anthropologie, i. 51, 55.