THE SUB-SPECIES OR RACES OF MAN.
If we accept the conclusion which has been offered in the previous pages, that all human beings belong to one zoological species, and are descended, if not from one pair, at least from a small group of similar animals occupying a limited territory toward the close of the Tertiary epoch, we are next called upon to explain the very obvious and perma nent differences between the varieties of men which now exist.
The distinctions between a negro and a white man are too positive to be accidental, and of too long standing to be explained by any temporary cause. Scarcely less so are those which divide the native American from the white and other inhabitants of the Old World.
As already remarked, these differences are not sufficient to establish other species, but they are, in the aggregate, so clearly marked that they separate the species into a number of sub-species, otherwise known as Races, Varieties, or Types of Mankind.
Ant/gaily of sub-species are of very ancient date. On some of the mural paintings in the valley of the Nile the negro and the pure white are clearly distinguished from the brown Copt, thus proving that at the dawn of history the racial traits were just as pronounced as they are now. But we can with safety proceed much beyond this. It was pointed out by Agassiz that the areas occupied by the principal races of men at the earliest known epoch corresponded closely to the areas of related fauna as defined by zoological geography. This points very strongly to the conclusion that a particular race developed coevally with the fauna with which it was surrounded, and hence mast be approximately of the same age. Grant this, and the division of the races of men must be put back in time to somewhere about the close of the Tertiary epoch, perhaps to the Glacial period, after which tremen dous catastrophe the surface of the earth slowly assumed its present physical conditions and areas of organic life.
Homo to their dissemination over the globe the primitive representatives of man may have been of several closely allied species, which by intermixture led to the formation of one type, as in the instances previously mentioned of the domestic dog and ox ; or they may have been at first of but one species. The latter has proved
the most acceptable theory to recent writers, and it has been proposed to call this precursor and ancestor of man Homo firimrkeniers, tive man." Others, advocates of positive theories, not satisfied with this vague term, have called him Honzo alalus, "speechless man," and Homo anIhropofiilhecus, "ape-like man." With the inadequate know ledge that investigations have as yet supplied, it is not worth while, as some have attempted, to go into a detailed description of what this first representative of the race must have been in appearance.
Diferences between differences between the races are exceedingly numerous. They vary in their anatomy and physiology, in location and language, in social customs and mental powers—even in the parasites that infest them. Notwithstanding all this, these variations are so mutable, they so shade off between races, they are, when taken indi vidually, so capricious and unstable, that it is impossible to accept any one as a means of classifying the species into its sub-species. To illus trate this, we may examine the various systems of classification which have from time to time been proposed.
Number of have differed as much in number as in the principles on which they are based. Scarcely any two ethnologists have divided the race alike, which is to be construed as a convincing proof of the uniformity of its type. The zoologist Cuvier was content with the most limited number, grouping all examples under a threefold division into the white, yellow, and black races ; but it is acknowledged that in this scheme it is difficult to find a place for the Malays and the American Indians. Dr. Samuel George Morton went to the other extreme, and insisted that there are at least twenty-two anatomically distinct races ! while Mr. Charles Pickering,. long the most prominent ethnologist of the United States, maintained the intermediate number of eleven races.