istics are obviously Mongolian, to winch race the Lappes unquestionably
belong. Dr. Prichard has produced philological evidence in
proof of an opinion maintained by himself and some other learned
men, that these people are Finns, who have acquired Mongolian features
from a long residence in the extreme north of Europe. Yet, it
must be remembered that, in former ages they lived much further
south, in Sweden, and side by side with the proper Finns; whence
has, no doubt, been derived any visible blending of the characters of
the two races, and some affinities of language which are known and
admitted by all.
This is a vital question in ethnology; and, although we have
already made some remarks upon it, it may be allowable in this
place to inquire how it happens that the people of Iceland, who are
of the unmixed Teutonic race, have for 600 years inhabited their
Polar region, as far north, indeed, as Lapland itself, without approximating
in the smallest degree to the Mongolian type, or losing an iota
of .their primitive Caucasian features.*
A recent traveller, f equally remarkable for talent and enterprise,
has briefly embodied the facts of this question in a manner sufficient
to decide it in any unprejudiced mind. He declares that the Finns
and Laplanders “ have scarcely a single trait in common. The
general physiognomy of the one is totally unlike that of the other;
and no one who has ever seen the two could mistake a Finlander for
a Laplander.” The very diseases to which they are subject are different
; and he quotes the learned Prof. Retzius of Stockholm for the
fact, that the intestinal parasitic worms of the one race are different
from those of the other. Finally, they differ almost as widely in their
mental and moral attributes.
But, to show how little mere philology can be depended on in this
and other instances, in deciding the affiliation of races, we may adduce
the researches of the learned Counsellor Haartman. This eminent
philologist has shown that the Carelians, who, from analogy of lan-
| guage, have hitherto been grouped with the proper Finnish race,
belong to a totally different family, which invaded the region of the
Lake Ladoga, and gave their name to the conquered country. This
race, he adds, had a language of its own, which was lost in the course
* Desmoulins: Hist. Nat. des Races Humaines, p. 165. Were it not for the evidence of
positive history, some future ethnologist might gravely insist that, because the Negroes of
St. Domingo speak the French language, they are Frenchmen, to whom a tropical sun,
altered aliments, and change of habits, have imparted the black skin, projecting face, and
woolly hair of the African.
f A Winter in Lapland and Sweden: by Arthur de Capell Brooks, M. A., F. R. St P .:
London, 1827, p. 536-37.
of time, “ and has been superseded by.the Finnic, from the overp
o w e r i n g influence of the neighboring tribes.” * Such, evidence
needs no commentary.
I I I . THE MALAY GROUP.
Besides the true Malays, the Malay race is composed of people of
dissimilar stock; whence the opinion of M. Lesson, that those of the
Indian Archipelago are a mixture of Indo-Caucasians and Mongols.
That this amalgamation exists to a certain extent, there is no question;
and in other instances they are variously blended with the indigenous
or Oceanic Hegro. Hence the origin of the Papuas of Hew Zealand,
who are the littoral inhabitants of that continent.
Independently, however, of these mixed breeds, two great families
are conspicuous — the Malays proper and the Polynesians — and to
these pertain the twenty-three heads embraced in the Table.
The true Malays have a rounded cranium, with a remarkable vertical
diameter and ponderous structure. The face is flat, the cheekbones
square and prominent, the ossa nasi long and more or less flattened,
and the whole maxillary structure strong and salient. The
twenty skulls in my possession have been collected with ethnological
precision, and so much resemble each other, as to remind us of the
remark of M. Crawford—that the true Malays are alike among themselves,
but unlike among all other nations.
The largest of this series of skulls measures ninety-seven cubic
inches, the smallest sixty-eight; and they give a mean of eighty-six:
a large brain for a roving and uncultivated people, who possess, however,
the elements of civilization and refinement.
Of the P olynesian F amily I possess but three crania that can be
measured, and they give a mean of eighty-three cubic inches. An
extended series would probably show a larger average; but the brain
of the Polynesian, if measured from skulls obtained to the eastward
of Hew Zealand and the Marquesas islands, will prove smaller than
that of the true Malay.
* Trans, of the Royal Society of Stockholm, for 1847. Egypt affords a remarkable example
of the mutability of language; and Niebuhr (Hist, of Rome, i. p. 37) considers it proved
that the Pelasgi, all the earliest inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, and many Arcadian and
Attic nations, possessed originally a different language from the Greeks, and obtained the
Hellenio tongue by adoption. He adds, that those Epirotes whom Thucydides calls Barbarians,
“ changed their language, without conquest or colonization, into Greek." Diodorus
and Cicero mention the same fact with respect to the Siculi, “ although the Greek colonies
in Sicily had only extended to a very few towns in the interior.”—Niebuhr, loco citat.