tically, to dwell chiefly on the facts brought forward, and to believe that they are indisputably and clearly proven. They tell us unmistakeably how different creations of animal and vegetable life are entombed in these vast monuments of ancient nature, and they reveal to us that each creation of the successive inhabitants of the surface lived during very long periods of time. They announce to us, in emphatic language, how ordinary operations of accumulation were continued tranquilly during very lengthened epochs, and how such tranquillity was broken in upon by great convulsions.

"Being thus led to ponder upon the long history of successive races, and also upon some of the most wonderful physical revolutions the chain has undergone, we cannot avoid arriving at the belief, that, in addition to many other great operations, the disruption which upheaved the middle and younger Tertiary formations from beneath the waters, and threw them up into mountain masses accompanying the production of the first great arctic period known in the history of the planet, was a change of immeasurable intensity. That change, in short, by which a period of snow, ice, glaciers, floating ice-bergs, and the transports of huge erratics far from sources of their origin, suddenly followed a genial and Mediterranean clime !"

R. I. M.

General and Special Apophthegms. By ROBERT GORDON LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S., &c.*

Although the enumeration, classification, and partial description of the varieties of the human species form the basis of the natural history of man, a short notice of the general character of the science which investigates itis a proper adjunct to them. This will consist in apophthegms upon its nature, objects, and methods, as far as the last have been evolved.

* As the Natural History of Man is at present engaging very general attention, we believe the publication of Dr Latham's important Apophthegms, or Maxims, will prove very useful in directing the studies of Ethnologists.-ED. Phil. Journ.

General Apophthegms.

I. The natural history of man is chiefly divided between two subjects, anthropology and ethnology.

II. Anthropology determines the relations of man to the other mammalia.

III. Ethnology, the relations of the different varieties of mankind to each other.

IV. Anthropology is more immediately connected with zoology; differing from it chiefly in the complexity of its problems, e. g. the appreciation of the extent to which the moral characteristics of man complicate a classification which in the lower animals, is, to a great extent, founded on physical criteria.

V. Ethnology is more immediately connected with history ; differing from it chiefly in its object, its method, and its arena.

VI. Whilst history represents the actions of men as determined by moral, ethnology ascertains the effect of physical influences.

VII. History collects its facts from testimony, and ethnology does the same; but ethnology deals with problems upon which history is silent, by arguing backwards, from effect to

cause.

VIII. This throws the arena of the ethnologist into an earlier period of the world's history than that of the proper historian.

IX. It is the method of arguing from effect to cause which gives to ethnology its scientific, in opposition to its literary aspect, placing it, thereby, in the same category with geology, as a paleontological science.* Hence it is the science of a method, a method by which inference does the work of testimony. Furthermore, ethnology is history in respect to its results; geology in respect to its method; and in the same way that geology has its zoological, physiological, and such other aspects as constitute it a mixed science, ethnology has them also.

* It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader that both this term and the classification are from Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences.

X. The simple record of facts constitutes ethnography, or descriptive ethnology.

XI. The application of these to the investigation of unascertained phenomena is general ethnology, or (simply) ethnology.

XII. The highest ethnological problems are those connected with 1, the unity; 2, the geographical origin; 3, the antiquity; and 4, the future destination, upon earth, of man. It arrives at these by its own proper and peculiar methods.

XIII. Ethnological classification deals with connection in the way of descent and affiliation only. It has no such object as the arrangement of individuals or classes according to any common physical or moral characteristics, except so far as these indicate community of origin.

XIV. In the present condition of the science, the appreciation of facts is of equal importance with the collection of them.

XV. A fact may be appreciated either as a characteristic or as an influence.

XVI. Facts used as signs or characteristics; and, as such, mostly applied to the purposes of classification, are either physical or moral; physical, as when we determine a class from the colour of the skin; moral, as when we determine one from the purity or impurity of the habits.

XVII. Moral characteristics are either philological (¿.e. connected with the language) or non-philological (i. e. not so connected).

XVIII. As elements of classification, the non-philological moral characters are of less value than the philological; since common conditions develop common habits; whereas nothing but imitation determines the use of similar combinations of articulate sounds in different languages.

XIX. In the way, too, of physical characteristics, common conditions develop common points of confirmation. Hence, as elements of classification, physical characters are of less value than the philological moral ones.

XX. On the other hand, as measures of the effects of common influences, physical structure and the non-philological

moral elements are of more value than the phenomena of language.

XXI. Facts requiring appreciation as influences, like those requiring appreciation as signs, are moral as well as physical. Have moral or physical causes most to do with premature nubility* and the want of variety in the expression of individual countenances?

XXII. Unity of the Human Species. A protoplast is an organised individual, capable (either singly or as one of a pair) of propagating individuals; itself having been propagated by no such previous individual or pair.

XXIII. The definition of the term species by means of the idea of descent from a single protoplast, has the advantage of being permanent and immutable; inasmuch as it is based upon a ground that no subsequent change can set aside.

On the other hand the proof of the original descent is an inference rather than a fact either ascertained or capable of being so.

XXIV. The definition of the term species upon the grounds of constancy of characters, has the advantage of being founded upon a fact capable of being ascertained. On the other hand, the induction which proves it may disprove it also. The same applies to those definitions of the term wherein the phenomena of hybridism play a part.

XXV. The balance of inconveniences is, in the mind of the present writer, in favour of the idea of descent determining the meaning of the word species, for human natural history at least.

XXVI. Hence, a species is a class of individuals, each of which is hypothetically considered to be the descendant of the same protoplast, or of the same pair of protoplasts.

* Plus ad catamenia præcipitanda, et ad nubilitatem immaturam inducendam vitiosam societatis compagemquam aut cœlum aut terra, conferre, libellis de Catameniis Afrarum, vicit, vir sagax, Robertonus Macuniensis.

XXVII. A multiplicity of protoplasts for a single species is a contradiction in terms. If two or more such individuals (or pairs), as like as the two Dromios, were the several protoplasts to several classes of organised beings (the present members being as like each other as their first ancestors were), the phenomenon would be the existence in nature of more than one undistinguishable species, not the existence of more than one protoplast to a single species.

XXVIII. A variety is a class of individuals, each belonging to the same species, but each differing from other individuals of the species in points wherein they agree amongst each other.

XXIX. A race is a class of individuals concerning which there are doubts as to whether they constitute a separate species, or a variety of a recognised one. Hence, the term is subjective; i. e. it applies to the opinion of the investigator rather than to the object of the investigation; so that its power is that of the symbol for an unknown quantity in algebra. The present writer having, as yet, found no tribe or family, for which a sufficient reason for raising it to a new species has been adduced, has either not used the word race at all, or used it inadvertently. Its proper place is in investigation not in exposition.

XXX. For an argument against the unity of the human species, drawn from the analogy of the lower animals, to be valid, it must be taken from a species co-extensive in its geographical distribution with man.

XXXI. To be thus co-extensive, it must not only be spread over a large area, but it must be spread continuously.

XXXII. To be thus co-extensive, it must be found at equally high and low sea levels, as well as at equally distant degrees of latitude and longitude.

XXXIII. Antiquity of the human species.-This problem is most likely to be worked through the phenomena of language. When determined it will give precision to the recent period of the geologist, converting it from a relative into a conventionally absolute epoch.

XXXIV. The average rate at which languages change is capable of being approximated.