changes observable in the varieties of the human family; but, on the contrary, many animals, when brought into new states and subjected to the influence of various natural agencies, have swerved from their original type of form and color, to a greater extent than exists in the various races of mankind. This is illustrated so abundantly by instances in the animal kingdom, that a susceptibility to change, both of form and color, is properly inferred to belong to the animal constitution. The animals subjected to the constant use of man afford ready illustrations. The same fact is observable in the vegetable kingdom. We would therefore ask, as Dr. N. has often done, "why should man alone form an exception?" Our author gives the following pertinent examples:

"All the swine in Piedmont are black; in Normandy white; in Bavaria brown. The oxen in Hungary are gray; in Franconia red. Horses and dogs in Corsica are spotted. The turkies of Normandy are black, those of Hanover white, etc. The dray horse of London and the Shetland pony are the same species; the wild boar and Berkshire; the large cock and the bantom; the long-legged ox of the Cape of Good Hope and the Durham, etc. One of the most striking instances is the variety of dogs, which are supposed to be of but one species. The Newfoundland, the Bull, the Greyhound, the Pointer, the Terrier, the Poodle, etc., certainly differ in their heads, form, size, color, hair, instincts, etc., as much (!) as the different varieties of men.' p. 21.

We shall add a few more, mostly taken from Wiseman. The Zebu, or Indian ox, has a hump on his back; and of this there is a smaller breed not larger than a hog. The best authorities consider the wild cat of Europe as the original of the domestic cat, although it is much larger, and armed with more disproportioned teeth and claws. There is a variety in Cornwall without any visible tail. There are nine distinct breeds of oxen in Great Britain, that of the Orkneys weighing about 200 pounds. Of sheep there are fifteen or twenty varieties, some with horns and variously shaped, and some without. Of the latter there are nine breeds. Fowls and dogs in Guinea are as black as the Negroes. Sheep in tropical countries lose their wool, and are covered with hair. In Guinea, according to Smith, they

"Have so little resemblance to those in Europe, that a stranger, unless he heard them bleat, could hardly tell what animals they were, being covered only with a light brown and black hair like a dog."

At Angora, almost every animal, sheep, goats, rabbits and

cats, are covered with a beautiful long silken hair. Bishop Heber says:

"Dogs and horses, carried into the hills from India, are soon covered with wool like the shawl goats of that climate."

According to Bosman:

"European dogs soon degenerate to a strange degree on the Gold Coast; their ears grow long and stiff like a fox's, to the color of which animal they also incline; so that they grow very ugly in the course of three or four years, and in as many broods their barking turns to a howl or yelp."

Barbot also says, the native dogs

"Are very ugly, being much like our foxes, with long upright ears; their tails long, small and sharp at the end, without any hair, having only a naked bare skin, either plain or spotted, and never bark but only howl."

The camel also exhibits varieties as extreme as the mastiff and greyhound. Dr. Wiseman says,

"That its great characteristic, the hump upon its back, which in the Bactrian variety is doubled, is supposed by some Naturalists to be an accidental deviation from the original type, arising from a sebaceous or fatty deposit in the cellular tissue of the back, in consequence of exposure to heat; just like the haunch on the Zebu, or the tail of the Barbary and Syrian sheep, or the similar formation on the loins of the Bosjman Hottentots."

"Dr. Pritchard gives one example which is very remarkable,—that of a breed of sheep reared within a few years in England, and known by the name of the ancon or otter breed. It sprung up from an accidental variety, or we may say deformity in one animal, which communicated its peculiarities so completely to its progeny, that the breed is completely established and promises to be perpetual; indeed, it is highly valued on account of the shortness of its legs, which does not allow it easily to get through fences." (Wiseman, p. 120.)

"The reasonings sanctioned by these facts," says Wiseman, "present a strong ground of analogy, applicable to the human species; nor is it easy to see why varieties as great may not have been produced and transmitted by descent among men, as among inferior animals. For it thus appears certain that diversities, equally affecting the form of the skull, the color and texture of the hair, and the general form of the body, do arise among animals of one stock. Further, it seems proved, that such differences may originally spring from some casual variety, which, owing to peculiar circumstances, becomes fixed and characteristic, and transmissible by descent. May we not, then, consider it as highly probable, that in the human species the same causes may similarly operate, and produce no less lasting effects? And that such variations as appear within it, being no VOL. VII.NO. 14.

32

more asunder from one another than such as in the brute creation have been noted, require no more violent or extraordinary agency to account for them." p. 120.

There are two kinds of change embraced in this "vexed question,"-viz: change of color, and change of form, which we shall proceed to illustrate separately by instances in the human family; only premising, that differences occurring within any acknowledged race, must be attributed, of course, to an actual change by natural causes.

Change of color. The Abyssinians are as black as the Negro, but without a trace of the Negro features. Their language, being a dialect of the Semitic family, points out a descent from a white race.

"Another and more striking example we have in the intelligent and accurate traveller, Burckhardt. The town of Souakim, situated on the African coast of the Red Sea, lower down than Mecca, contains a mixed population, formed, first of Bedouins or Arabs, including the descendants of the ancient Turks, and secondly of the town's people, who are either Arabs from the opposite coast, or Turks of modern origin. The following is his account of the two classes. Of the first he says,-The Hadherebe, or Bedouins of Souakin, have exactly the same features, language and dress as the Nubian Bedouins. In general, they have handsome and expressive features, with thin and very short beards. Their color is the darkest brown, approaching to black; but they have nothing of the Negro character of countenance. The others, who are descended entirely from settlers from Mossoul, Hadramout, etc., and from Turks sent thither by Selim upon his conquest of Egypt, have undergone the same change. "The present race,' says Burckhardt, 'have the African features and manners, and are in no way to be distinguished from the Hadherebe." Here, then, we have two distinct nations, Arabs and Turks, in the course of a few centuries, becoming black in Africa, though originally white." Wiseman, p. 136.

The Abbé de Manet says:

"That in 1764 he baptized the children of some poor Portuguese who had settled upon the African coast in the year 1721, and that the change of color was already so far advanced in them, that they only differed from young Negroes by some tints of white in the skin." (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, I. 185.) "The descendants of the first Portuguese, who settled in Africa about the year 1450, have become complete Negroes as to color, hair, beard and physiognomy." (Ibid, 186.)

"The famous Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled over a great part of the old continent, about the year 1173, remarks, that the Jews who had fled to the provinces of southern Asia and Africa were all changed more or less, according to the degree of heat in the country of their abode. Those of Abyssinia had become black as the natives,

from whom they could no longer be distinguished merely by the physiognomy. If we bear in mind that these wanderers, unsocial through fanaticism, regarded a mixture of their blood with foreigners as an abomination and sacrilege, we cannot deny that it is climate which has blackened these expatriated Hebrews." (Ibid. p. 186.)

The Shegya Arabs, says Waddington,

"Are black,-a clear, glossy, jet black, which appeared to my then unprejudiced eyes to be the finest colour that could be selected for a human being. They are distinguished in every respect from the Negroes by the brightness of their colour; by their hair and the regularity of their features; by the mild and dewy lustre of their eyes; and by the softness of their touch, in which last respect they yield not to Europeans."

"It is remarkable to observe, says Bishop Heber, how surely all these classes of men, (Persians, Greeks, Tartars, Turks and Arabs,) in a few generations, even without any intermarriage with the Hindoos, assume the deep olive tint, little less dark than the Negro, which seems natural to the climate. The Portuguese natives form unions among themselves alone, or, if they can, with Europeans; yet the Portuguese have, during a 300 years residence in India, become as black as Caffres."-Wiseman, p. 139. The same writer, "describing his arrival in Calcutta, says, the great difference in colour between different natives, struck me much. Of the crowd by whom we were surrounded, some were black as Negroes, others merely copper-coloured, and others little darker than the Tunisians whom I have seen at Liverpool. Mr. Mill tells me that he cannot account for this dif ference, which is general throughout the country and every where striking. It is not merely the difference of exposure, since th s variety of tint is visible in the fishermen, who are all naked alike. Nor does it depend on caste, since very high caste Brahmins are sometimes black, while Pariahs are comparatively white." Ibid, p. 135.

He also speaks of Malays of beautiful features, noble look and perfectly black. The following case is stated by Buckingham, of a family beyond the Jordan:

"The family residing here in charge of the sanctuary, were remarkable for having, with the exception of the father only, Negro features, a deep black color, and crisped hair. My own opinion was, that this must have been occasioned by their being born of a negress mother, as such persons are sometimes found among the Arabs in the relation of wives or concubines; but while I could entertain no doubt, from my own observation, that the present head of the family was a pure Arab of unmixed blood, I was also assured, that both the males and females of the present and former generations were all

American Biblical Repository, second series, Vol. X., p. 46, from an article entitled "The Mosaic Account of the Unity of the Human Race, confirmed by the Natural History of the American Aborigines, by Samuel Forrey, M. D., New-York."

pure Arabs by descent and marriage, and that a negress had never been known, either as a wife or slave, in the history of the family. It is certainly a very marked peculiarity of the Arabs that inhabit the valley of the Jordan, that they have flatter features, darker skins and coarser hair, than any other tribes; a peculiarity rather attributable, I conceive, to the constant and intense heat of that region, than to any other cause." Wiseman, p. 121.

There are various tribes in Africa differing as much in color from the jet-black Negro, as the latter does from some of the varieties of the Caucasian race. We have ourselves seen a person of the humbler class, born in Spain, probably with a taint of Moorish blood, who was as dark as some natives we have seen from Central Africa. The Foulahs along the Senegal and Gambia, are of a tawny complexion, lighter and yellower in some states than in others, with soft silky hair, and without the flat nose and thick lips of the Negro. The Berbers of Nubia are nearly as black as the Negro, but have very different features, and are deemed of handsome person. Eastern Africa is generally occupied by brown and black nations, which resemble the Negroes in nothing but color. Between Fezzan and Central Africa are the Tibboos and Tuaricks; the former nearly as black as the Negro, but of different and smaller features, with longer and less curled hair. The Tuaricks are not dark colored, except when tanned by the sun, and Capt. Lyon thought them the finest race he ever saw. Dr. Morton supposes that they collaterally represent the ancient Egyptians. The Caffres are of a brown color, and of the finest symmetry. The skin of the Hottentot is of a yellowish brown, though he is generally covered with a black cake of well smoked grease. Barrow says that many of them are, "nearly as white as Europeans."* These various shades of color in the inhabitants of Africa have an important bearing upon our author's argument, take them which way we will. For, first, we see that others beside the Negro can live in tropical Africa; second, that a race different from the Negro inhabits that region, being quite black, but of such distinct features and hair, as to indicate a derivation from another stock; and, third, if it should be pretended that they all belong to the proper Negro family, then there will be admitted a sufficient variation of color, form, and feature, within the limits of one race, to account for all the varieties of mankind.

Barrow's Travels in South Africa.