unheeded—and earnestly compare the historical phases of our youthful
Republic with those of the fallen Greek and Roman empires, and
the already enfeebled English Commonwealth, that he may learn
those unalterable laws of political reproduction, evolution, and decay,
and thus, forewarned, provide intelligently for the amelioration of
that disease whose seeds were planted when the Declaration of Independence
was proclaimed, and whose deadly influences "threaten,
sooner or later, like the Lianes of a tropical forest, to suffocate the
national tree over which they are silently spreading.
Though war and slavery, those powerful agents in amalgamation,
have been going on, without interruption, from the earliest recorded
history of our race down to the present moment, yet certain primary
types have maintained themselves, amidst every conflict, and under
the most destructive influences, as vestiges or wrecks of the remotest
times, and in virtue of a certain, inherent and mutual antipathy, as
old as the oldest varieties of our race. The instability of human
hybrids is as remarkable as the permanency of the pure stocks. The
area of the hybrid forms is in all cases limited, and their existence
devoid of a self-sustaining power. Where the mixed races are subjected
to a modified climatic influence, they for a while appear to
maintain themselves, and even extend their locality beyond their
primary centres of creation; hut, sooner or later, they disappear,
either through extermination, or absorption by the purer races, or in
consequence of a mysterious degradation of vital energy. Nevertheless,
long after their obliteration, they leave their impress upon the
conquering and exterminating races, in the shape of modifications
of the skull, stature, habits, intellectual conditions, &c. In this instability,
this inherent tendency to decay, we discover the great check
to the assumption by the hybrid types of that homogeneity which, in
all probability, once characterized the primeval groups of man.
“ As it is with individual life, so families, tribes, and nations, most likely even raoes,
pass away. In debatable regions, their tenure is only provisional, until the typical form
appears, when they are extinguished, or found to abandon all open territories, not positively
assigned them by nature, to make room for those to whom they are genial. This effect is
itself a criterion of an abnormal origin; for a parent stock, a typical form of the present
genus or species, perhaps with the sole exception of the now extinct Flatheads, is, we believe,
indestructible and ineffaceable. No change of food or circumstances can sweep away
the tropical, woolly-haired man; no event, short of a general cataclycis, can transfer his
centre of existence to another; nor can any known cause dislodge the beardless type from
the primeval high North-Eastern region of Asia and its icy shores. The white or bearded
form, particularly that section which has little or no admixture, and is therefore quite fair,
can only live, not thrive, in the two extremes of temperature. It exists in them solely as
a master race, and must be maintained therein by foreign influences; and the intermediate
regions, as we have seen, were in part yielded to the Mongolic on one side, and but temporarily
obtained, by extermination from the woolly-haired, on the other.” “ » Hybrid forms
cannot be regarded as characteristic of a new race ; amidst all the confusion of blood, “ we
look in vain for a new race. Nature asserts her dominion on all hands in a deterioration
and degradation, the fatal and depopulating consequences of which it is appalling to contemplate.”
109
To the cranioscopist, the most interesting point, perhaps, in this
whole inquiry, is the determination of the particular influence exerted
by each parent stock upon the formation of tke hybrid cranium.
So much obscurity surrounds this question, however, and the facts
concerning it are so. scanty and conflicting, that I am compelled to
forego its discussion in this place, and refer the reader to the writings
of W a lk e r (Intermarriage; or, Beauty, Health, and Intellect)-, C ombe
{The Constitution of Man)-, B l a in e (Outlines of the Veterinary Art) ;
E dwards (Des Caractères JPhysiologiques des Races Humaines) ; H arvey
(.Monthly Journal of Medical Science, Aug. 1854); B ér ar d (Cours de
Physiologie) ; and particularly, L ucas (Traité Philosophique et Physiologique
de l'Hérédité Naturelle).
As already intimated, the attempted classifications of the human
family are as numerous as they are various. Those based upon the
form of the skull are perhaps the most reliable, since the skull is
intimately connected with the intellectual organs, and resists, in a
remarkable manner, the altering influences of climate. Among
others, the most simple, though in some respects objectionable, is that
of Prof. R e t z iu s , who, in an essay upon the cranial forms of Northern
Europe/ 10 divides all heads into Long (Dolichocéphales) and Short
(.Brachycephalm). Each of these he again subdivides into Straight-
Jaws (Orthognathce) and Prominent Jaws (Prognathes). The races
comprised in each of these divisions are seen in the accompanying
scheme. . 6
Long heads / jaws 1 Celtic and Germanic tribes.
1 Prominent jaws/Negroes, Australians, Oceanians, Caribs, Greenlanders, &c.
Short heads f Straight jaws .1 Laplanders, Finns, Sclaves, Turks, Persians, &o.
I Prominent jaws / Tartars, Mongolians, Malays, Inoas, Papuas, &c.
Prof. Z e u n e , after animadverting upon what he calls the “ one-sided
polarity” of this classification, adopts three main forms or types of
skull for the Eastern, and three corresponding types for the Western
hemisphere, thus dividing mankind into six races, as is shown in the
subjoined table :,m
106 Hamilton Smith, op. cit., p. 175.
109 Davis, Cran. Brit., p. 7.
m S '* 61, die Sohädelformen der Nordbewohner. — Mjiller’s Archives, 1845, p. 84
Uber Schädelbildung, pp. 19, 20.