' ETHNOLOGY (Gr. ethnos, nation or race, and logos, discourse), a term applied to the science that treats of the persistent modifications of the human family or group; their most marked physical, mental, and moral characteristics when Compared one with the other; their present geographical distribution on the globe; their history traced back wards to the earliest attainable point; and, finally, the languages of the various nations and tribes of mankind, existing or extinct, classified and compared, with the view, by their means, of determining the chief points of resemblance or dissimilarity among the nations of the earth. This science has gradually outgrown its name. It has been there fore deemed expedient to apply to it a term of wider and more neutral significance— namely, anthropology—derived from the Greek anthropos, man, and logos, a discourse. The term ethnology has this inconvenience, that it means no more than the " science of races," and many authorities not only deny the existence of races of mankind, affirming that what are called races are in reality distinct species, but others argue that the term is as applicable to any races—e.g., races of dogs, or cats, or pigeons —as to the races of mankind. Hence the more exact and less sectarian term anthropology has been applied to denote the science that treats of the natural history of man. The science is divided into three branches-1. Zoological anthropology, which treats of the relations of man to the brute creation; 2. Descriptive anthropology, or ethnog raphy, which classifies and describes the various divisions and subdivisions of man kind, and marks out their geographical distribution; 3. General anthropology, which M. Broca. calls " the biology of the human race," which, says a recent writer on the sub ject, " borrows and collates from all sciences facts and phenomena usually investigated in men as individuals, but which relate to men as groups of individuals," and compares these with other facts relating to other groups of individuals. The study and bare description of a single negro's skull is mere human anatomy; the study of a group of negroes' skulls, and the description and comparison of their peculiarities with those of groups of skulls belonging to other races, would be a specimen of the work done by general anthropology.
No one can look at an Englishman, a red Indian, and a negro, without at once notic ing the differences between the three, not only as regards the color of their skin, but the shape of the skull, the texture of the hair, and the character of the several features, as eyes, lips, nose, and cheek-bones. What strikes the ordinary observer chiefly is, of
course, the difference of complexion; but the anatomist is fully as much interested in the shape of the skull. The first thoroughly scientific writer who endeavored to lay down a method of distinguishing between the different races of mankind by a compari son of the shape and size of the skull was Peter Camper, a distinguished Dutch anato mist of last century. He laid down a technical rule for ascertaining the facial line, and determining the amount of the facial angle, which he has thus described: "The basis on which the distinction of nations is founded may be displayed by two straight lines, one of which is to be drawn through the meatus auditorius to the base of the nose, and the other touching the prominent center of the forehead, and falling thence on the most advancing part of the upper jaw-bone, the head being viewed in profile. In the angle produced by these two lines may be said to consist not only the distinctions between the skulls of the several species of animals, but also those which are found to exist between different nations." The heads of birds display the smallest angle, and it apparently becomes of greater extent " in proportion as the animal approaches more nearly to the human figure. Thus, there is one species of the ape-tribe in which the head has a facial angle of 42 deg.; in another animal of the same family, which is one of those simhe most approximating in figure to mankind, the facial angle contains exactly 50 deg. Next to this is the bead of the African negro, which, as well as that of the Kalmuck, forms an angle of 70 deg.; while the angle discovered in the heads of Europeans con tains 80 deg. On this difference of 10 deg. in the facial angle, the superior beauty of the European depends; while that high character of sublime beauty which is so striking in some works of ancient statuary, as in the head of Apollo, and in the Medusa of Siso des, is given by an angle which amounts to 100 deg." The nearer the facial angle approached a right angle, the greater was held to be the intellectual development of the race. But M. Jacquart, of the natural history museum in Paris, showed that the facial angle in stupid people very often approached closely a right angle, and that, in the homogeneous population of Paris, the facial angle varied within wider limits than those Camper stated as a criterion of distinct species.