“ These species must have been necessarily created each one in
the country in which it was destined to perpetuate itself;, and hence
then, we must admit, at the origin, a considerable number of foci
(souches). * * *
“ We think, with DugÈs (Traité de Physiologie), that mankind
comprehends a great number of species ; but, by what signs these
species can he defined in an indubitable manner, no one, in the
present-state [of science], can tell, if he abstains from comparing
only the most dissimilar.” 167
But, by way of parenthesis, as explanatory of a passing comment
on “ Yestiges of Creation,” and of a remark by Klemm (supra, pp.
454-5), that inferior human races seem in antiquity to have preceded
the superior, there are data which here may find place.
161 B l a n c h a r d , Voyage au Pôle Sud, corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée, 1 8 3 7 - 4 0 , Anthropologie,
par M. le Docteur D u m o d t i e r , Paris, 1 8 5 4 , pp. 1 9 , 4 5 , 4 6 .
In corroboration of what a far-travelled Doctorj M. D u m o u t i e r , says above, and elsewhere,
in regard to the creation of a distinct species of man for each zoological country ;
no less than to fortify the positions sustained by my collaborator D r . N o t t (ante, Chapter
IV, p. 547), as to the non-acclimation of races, and the non-cosmopolitism of man ; I subjoin
an extract from a work by our mutual friend D r . B o u d in , which Dr. Nott had mislaid
when his MS. was sent to the printer :
“ For a long time there has been ascribed to man the faculty of adapting himself to
every climate, and the power of establishing his residence upon all points of the globe.
Such credence, rdposing upon no kind of experimental basis whatever, could merely constitute
but a simple hypothesis ; against which, now-a-days, facts, as authentic as numerous,
protest. Perhaps the partisans of cosmopolitism had been in too grèat a hurry to lend to
a fraction of humanity, represented, by what it has been agreed upon to call, the ‘ Caucasian’
race, that which may very well not belong save to the ensemble of mankind ;—perhaps,
too, they had not sufficiently discriminated the laboring and agricultural man, from the
mere transitory excursionist.” Thus, in order to prove his position, Boudin cites, amongst
other examples, — how, in Egypt, the austral negroes are, and the Caucasian Memlooks
were, unable to raise up even a third generation,—how, in Corsica, French families vanish
beneath Italian surnames. Where are the descendants of Romans, or Vandals, or Greeks,
in Africa? In modem Arabia (1830), after Mohammed Ali had got clear of the Morea-
war, 18,000 Arnaoots (Albanians) were soon reduced to some 400 men. At Gibraltar
(1817), a negro regiment was almost annihilated by consumption. In 3841, during three
weeks on the Niger, 130 Europeans out of 145 caught African fever, and 40 succumbed;
whilst, out of 158 negro sailors, only 11 were affected, and none died. In 1809, the British
Walchereen expedition failed, in the Netherlands, through one kind of marsh fever; about
the same period that, at St. Domingo, 20 French Generals, and 15,000 rank and file, died
in twb months by another malarial disease. Of 30,000 to 32,000 Frenchmen, but some
8000 survived exposure to that Antillian island ; while the Dominicanized African negro,
Toussaint l’Ouverture, re-transported to Europe, was perishing from the chill of his prison
in France. (Pathologie comparée, Paris, 1849, pp. 1—4).
Again, “ already the facts acquired by science establish, in a manner irrevocable, that
the diverse races, which constitute the great family of humanity, obey especial laws, under
the triple aspect of birth, mortality, and. pathological aptitudes.” France uses negro
soldiers at Guyana and Senegal ; England employs, like the Romans of old, the natives of
each colony, to perform arduous military works — confining (coeteris paribus)- for all hard
labor, tropical soldiers to the Tropics, and extra-tropically-bom soldiery to servile duty,
P A R T I I .
Great and multifarious are the changes in palaeontology, as i n
other sciences, since Georges Cuvier wrote :
“ That which astounds is, that amongst all these Mammifers, of
which the greater part possess now-a-days their congeners in hot
countries, there has not been a single Quadrumane ; that there has
not been gathered a single .hone, a single tooth of a Monkey, were
they hut some hones or some teeth of monkeys, of now-lost
species.” 1®
Barely five years after the decease, in 1832, of this grand naturalist,
fossil Simise turned up, during 1837, in Prance and in Hindostán
!
In eighteen subsequent years of exploration, many more have
been discovered; enumerated in the subjoined works169 as genus
Hapale, 2 species ; Callithrix primævus Pro^opithecus, 2 ; Cebus, 1 ;
found in South America : — Macacus eocoenus, Pithecus gntiquus, 2
species, &c. ; in England, Prance, or in the Sub-Himalayan range.
Wagner had previously indicated the existence of other fossil
monkeys in Greece; but early in the present year, M. Gaudry
reports to. the Académie des Sciences, his having exhumed, at the
“ gîte fossilifère de Pikermi,” 170 specimens of Mesopithecus major
and Mesopithecus pentelicus ; mixed up with remains of hyæna,
mastodon, rhinoceros, hog, hippotherium, bos-marathonieus, giraffe,
and probably of birds.
Geologists can now determine the relative epochas of each specimen,
according to the formations in which the several genera of
such fossil monkeys appear; but De Blainville states that, while
these of Brazil are more recent, being met with in the diluvium of
caverns, — “ those of India and Europe lie in a medium tertiary
fresh-water deposit, and consequently are of an age long anterior to
only where the climate accords with that of their race and birth-place. At Sierra Leone
the mortality of negroes, compared to that of whites, is as 30 to 483 ; i. e. as 1 against 161
(Physiolog ie et Pathologie comparées des Races humaines, pp. 1-7).
168 Discours sur les Révolutions de la surface du Globe, Paris, 1830, 6th ed., p. 351.
169 M a r c e l d e S e r r e s , Essai sur les Cavernes à Ossements, Paris, 8vo, 3d ed., 1838; pp.
226-7 :—D e B l a i n v i l l e , Ostéographie, “ Mammifères-Primates,” Paris, 4to, 1841 ; pp. 49-
66: — D ’Or b i g n y , Did. JJniv. d’Hist. Nat. ; Paris, 1847; X, pp 669-70, “ Quadrumanes
fossiles H e c e , Iconographie Encyclopedia, transi. Baird, New York, 1851; II, pp. 492—
8 :— G e r v a i s -, Trois règnes de la Nature, Mammifères, Ie partie, Paris, 1854 ; pp. 12-13,
170 Letter to M. Elie de Beaumont; Athenoeum Français, 1 Mars, 1856; pp. 167.