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the same as when they migrated a thousand years ago. African negroes that have for three centuries been transported to the New World remain unchanged. The Spaniards settled in tropical America remain as fair as the people of Arrazon and Andalusia. He contended that climate had no influence in determining colour in different races. Fins and Laps, though further north, are darker than the Swedes: and within the Arctic circle we find Esquimaux of the same colour and complexion as the Malays under the Equator. Yellow Hottentots and Bushmen live in the immediate neighbourhood of Black Caffres and negroes. There is as wide a difference between the colour of an African negro and a European, between a Hindos and a Chinese, and between an Australian and a Red American, as there is between the species of wolves, jackals, and foxes. The arguments for the unity of the human race drawn from anatomical reasoning would also prove that there was no difference between hogs and bears, the bovine and equine and the canine families.

On Language as a Test of the Races of Man. By J. CRAWFURD, F.R.S. The author commenced by observing that on former occasions he had referred to the subject of this paper, but now he did not hesitate at once to affirm that language, though yielding valuable evidence of the history and migrations of man, affords no sure test of the race he belongs to. In illustration he said that the majority of the people of this country, who 2000 years ago spoke their own native tongues, whatever those might have been, now spoke a language derived from Germany, on which has been engrafted a considerable portion of one which had its origin in Italy, while of their native tongues two examples only remained, and these, without doubt, were doomed in a few generations to extinction as living languages. France, Egypt, Northern India, the New World, and other regions, also exhibited cogent illustrations of a similar character, one of the most important being the fact, well ascertained, that, so wonderful is the flexibility and compass of the human organs, the children of races the most opposite, when duly taught from infancy, will acquire a complete mastery over any foreign languages, be they ever so difficult of pronunciation or complex in structure.

Some Observations on the Psychological Differences which exist among the Typical Races of Man. By ROBERT DUNN, F.R.C.S. Engl.

The object of the author in this paper was to indicate and suggest to the psychological and ethnological Members of the British Association a field of investigation and inquiry, which, in his estimation, if thoroughly explored, could not fail, unless he was greatly mistaken, of yielding a rich harvest, and of throwing a flood of light upon the causes of the psychological differences which exist among the typical races of man. He maintains that the Genus Homo is one, and that all the races of the great family of man are endowed with the same instinctive intuitions, sensational, perceptive, and intellectual, the same mental activities,-in other words, that they all have as constituent elements the germs or original principles in common, of a moral, religious, and intellectual nature, so that, however great and striking their psychological differences may be, they are nevertheless differences in degree, and not of kind.

Viewing the brain or encephalon as the material organ of the mind, where the ultimate molecular changes precede the mental states, and from whence the mandates of the will issue, whether for the production of voluntary motion or for other acts of volition, he dwells on the paramount importance of assiduously studying, and carefully comparing and contrasting, the cerebral developments of the different races, with a view, and as the most efficient means, to the better understanding and elucidation of the psychological differences which exist among and characterize them. But the cerebral physiology of the typical races remains to be wrought out, and ethno-psychology is still a desideratum. Significant among them as the varying forms of the skull may be, and important as is the division of the whole human family, by Retzius, into Dolichocephalic and Brachycephalic, with its sub-division, according to the upright or projecting character of the jaws, into orthognathous and prognathous, and as characterizing and indicating elevation and degradation of type, the author considers that the time has come not to be satisfied with a mere

external survey, but that the bony coverings should be removed, and, under the guidance of the chart provided by the indefatigable Gratiolet, the cerebral convoIutions themselves should be thoroughly examined, and carefully compared and contrasted with each other, in all the typical races. When this has been done, but not until then, shall we, in his opinion, have a clue likely to unravel and elucidate many of the existing obscurities appertaining to their psychological differences. Much as it is to be regretted that the brains of the lowest and most degraded of the human races have been so little examined, it is now to be hoped that, in respect to the aboriginal tribes at the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, and, within reach, the Hill Men of India, as well as elsewhere, medical men will be found to supply this desideratum of ethno-psychology. This accomplished, he thinks we shall cease to wonder how it happens that the North American Indians, on the very confines of civilization, should remain uncivilized-the same wandering lawless savages which they were when Columbus first set his foot among them; how their wigwams and the miserable bark huts of the aborigines of New Holland should have been swept away before the flood-tide of European civilization--those homeless savages themselves seeking refuge in the desert and the mountain; and, again, among the Mongolian nations of Asia, that we shall be better enabled to comprehend how it is that their civilization, so early attained, has not progressed, but remained stationary: China, boasting of a civilization nearly as old as that of Egypt, has remained stationary for thirty centuries. Lastly, even among the European nations, the distinctive characters of the Saxon and the Celt, he is inclined to believe, will be found to be engraven on their brains.

As instances from savage life, he views, in contrast, the African Negro and the North American Indian, with the intent of showing, so far as the subject has hitherto been investigated, what light the differences in their cerebral developments can throw on their respective characters, mental manifestations, and destinies. Among the Negro tribes there is a great variety, and much difference in their mental endowments. Some have become excellent mechanics, others clerks and accountants, while others have remained mere labourers, incapable of any intellectual attainments, and characterized by low and receding foreheads. When free from pain and hunger, the life of the Negro is one of enjoyment. As soon as his toils are for a moment suspended, he sings, he seizes his fiddle, he dances. Easily excitable, and in the highest degree susceptible of all the passions, he is more especially so of those of the mild and gentle affections. The American Indians, on the contrary, are averse to civilization, and slow in acquiring knowledge. They are restless, stern, silent, and moody, and to them a ruminating life is a burden. They are revengeful, wild, vindictive, cunning, but wholly destitute of maritime adventure; too dangerous to be trusted by the white man in social intercourse, and too obtuse and intractable to be worth coercing into servitude.

The Negro is Dolichocephalic, the Indian Brachycephalic, and both are prognathous. Their cranial and cerebral differences are striking. The skull of the Negro is long, but narrow, and the forehead low, but it rises higher, and is more developed in the intellectual and moral regions, than that of the Indian; the occiput is large. In the Red Indian the skull is small, and short from front to back; it is wide between the parietal protuberances, prominent at the vertex, and flat at the occiput; its great deficiency lies in the superior and lateral parts of the forehead. The anterior lobe of the brain in the Negro and Indian is small, while in the European it is large, in proportion to the middle lobe. The posterior lobe of the Indian is small, but the vertex of the middle lobe is prominent, and the brain is wide between the parietal protuberances. In the Negro the posterior lobe is more fully developed, but it is in the European brain that it reaches its maximum development. Both in the Negro and Indian the cerebral hemispheres are pointed and narrow in front, and their transverse convolutions in the frontal lobes are markedly conspicuous for the simplicity and regularity of their arrangement, and for the perfect symmetry which they exhibit in both of the hemispheres, when compared and contrasted with the complexity and irregularity which are presented in the brain of the European. Such differences as these, the author considered, warrant the inference that, alike in the Negro and the Indian, the nervous apparatus of the perceptive and intellectual consciousness falls far short of that fulness, elaboration, and com1862. 10

plexity of development which characterize the Caucasian brain; and hence the reason why the large-brained European differs from and so far surpasses the smallbrained savage in the complexity of his manifestations, both intellectual and moral In conclusion, he observed that the leading characters of the various races of mankind have been maintained to be simply representatives of a particular type in the development of the highest or Caucasian; the Negro exhibiting permanently the imperfect brow, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs of the Caucasian chil some considerable time before its birth, the aboriginal Americans representing the same child nearer birth, and the Mongolian the same newly born.

Exploration dans l'Afrique centrale, de Serre-Leone à Alger, par Timbuctu. By JULES GÉRARD.

On leaving Sierra Leone, the author proposed to visit the source of the Niger, and also to visit the Republic of Liberia. He should then make for the Kong Mountains, between which district and Timbuctoo a different race of natives was found. He did not propose to travel with a caravan, but with the tribes of the district. At Timbuctoo, or Ain Saleh, he hoped to discover the papers and journals of Major Laing, the African traveller, who was assassinated near Timbuctoo. The author expressed a confident belief that these papers were still in existence, since the natives of the interior had almost a superstitious veneration for written characters, and treasured the most worthless scraps until long after they were illegible. His route would be through a country possessing a double interest, both geogra phical and ethnological. The journey was long and perilous; but he had weighed the difficulties of the route, and confidently expected to make his way from Sierra Leone to Algeria in safety.

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A Letter from Dr. LIVINGSTONE, communicated by Sir Roderick Murchison, "Shupanga, River Zambesi, April 29, 1862. "My dear Sir Roderick Murchison,-With a sore, sore heart I must tell the loss of my much-loved wife, whose form was laid in the grave yesterday morning. She died in Shupanga-house on the evening of the 27th, after about seven days' illness. I must confess that this heavy stroke quite takes the heart out of me. Everything else that has happened only made me more determined to overcome; but with this sad stroke I feel crushed and void of strength. Only three short months of her society after four years' separation! I married her from love, and the longer I lived with her I loved her the more. A good wife, and a good, kind, brave-hearted mother was she, and deserved all the praises you bestowed on her at our parting dinner, for teaching her own, and the native children too at Kolobeng. I try to bow to the blow as from our Heavenly Father, who orders all things for us. Some may afford to be stoical, but I should not be natural if I did not shed many tears over one who so deserved them. I never contemplated exposing her in the lowlands. I proposed that the Nyassa steamer should sail out, and on reaching Kongone cut wood and steam up the river. This involved but a few days in the lowlands; but another plan was preferred. She (i. e. the steamer) came in pieces in a brig. Gladly accepting the kind offer of Captain Wilson, of her Majesty's ship Gorgon,' to help us up to the Murchison cataracts, we found by a month's trial that the state in which the engines were precluded ascending the Shire with the pieces on board the 'Pioneer. We were forced to put her together at Shupanga, and we have been three months, instead of three or four days, down here. Had my plan been adhered to-but why express useless regrets? All had been done with the best intentions. But you must remember how I hastened the first party away from the Delta, and though I saved them, got abused for breaking the Sabbath. Then I prevented Bishop Mackenzie's party landing at all, till these same unhealthy months were past, and no one perished until the bishop to the unhealthy lowlands and died. The Portuguese have taken advantage of the sanitary knowledge we have acquired, and send their tete at once. They lost but two of a detachment, while formerly, by keeping them at Quillimane and Senna,

nearly all were cut off.

came down

"I shall do my duty still, but it is with a darkened horizon I set about it. Mr.

Rae put the hull of the new steamer together in about a fortnight after we brought up the keel. She looks beautiful and strong, and I have no doubt will answer all our expectations when we get her on the lake.

"Ever affectionately yours,
"DAVID LIVINGSTONE."

On Serious Inaccuracies in the Great Survey of the Alps, south of Mont Blanc, as issued by the Government of Sardinia. By W. MATHEWS, Jun., M.A., F.G.S.

The maps referred to were the six-sheet map of Savoy and Piedmont which appeared in 1841, the great ninety-one-sheet map now in course of publication, and that attached to the work entitled 'Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia,' dated 1845, all of which were issued by the War Department of the Sardinian Government. Among the many cases of error, the most extraordinary was that of the Mont Iséran, a mountain stated to be nearly 13,300 feet high, hitherto supposed to be the culminating peak of the Graian Alps, and represented as situated in Savoy, immediately on the east of the Col of the same name. From investigations made in the country by Mr. Mathews and other travellers since the year 1859, it was now conclusively established that no such peak exists in the situation in which it is placed by the Sardinian engineers. The height of the so-called Mont Iséran was determined trigonometrically at the commencement of the present century by Colonel Corabœuf, of the Etat-Major Français, and on referring to his original memoir, it appears that the peak he measured is situated in Italy, and is, in fact, the Grand Paradis, a mountain nearly fifteen miles distant from the supposed site of the Mont Iséran. Mr. Mathews next described the position of the eight principal summits of the Graian Alps, rising above 12,000 feet, most of which had been ascended for the first time, and their altitudes determined, by members of the Alpine Club within the last three years. He showed that these mountains were most incorrectly represented on the maps, and stated his conviction that the main Alpine ranges had been roughly drawn in the office of the War Department and never properly surveyed.

Decipherment of the Phoenician Inscription on the Newton Stone, Aberdeenshire. By the Rev. Dr. MILL.

The subject of this paper was an inscribed stone, found at a village in Aberdeenshire, some miles from the coast, and in a country containing many of what are commonly called Druidical monuments. Dr. Mill read the inscription backwards, decided that the letters were Phoenician, and explained them by the corresponding letters of the Hebrew alphabet. According to his interpretation, it was a votive monument dedicated to Eshmùn, god of health (the Tyrian Esculapius), in gratitude for favours received during "the wandering exile of me thy servant,"-the dedicator being "Han-Thanit-Zenaniah, magistrate, who is saturated with sorrow." Dr. Mill discussed the question whether Han-Thanit-Zenaniah had suffered from disease or shipwreck, and whether his sorrow had been caused by the loss of companions, or friends, or relations. He discussed also the peculiarity of the word used in the signification of magistrate, and pointed out that he appeared to have been a man of consular dignity who had commanded a ship or fleet which came to Britain, and that this and other circumstances pointed to the earlier period of the history of Tyre.

On Recent Notices of the Rechabites. By Signor PIEROTTI.

Towards the end of April 1860, the author, travelling south of the Dead Sea, and in a valley about two miles therefrom, met a tribe of Rechabites, whose object was to procure a supply of linen and salt; the next day another tribe arrived, on a similar errand; these all described themselves as descendants of Ishmael—a mistake of course if they were really Rechabites, which they also claimed to be. They were exceedingly clean in their dresses and persons-cleaner than any other Bedouins; but the most singular point connected with them was that they had a

copy of the Scriptures in Hebrew. With regard to their being descendants of Rechab, they quoted Jeremiah xxxv. 4-7. They stated themselves to be 600,000 in number, thus confirming the prophecy, and the chief location of the tribes to be the south-east of the Mountains of Moab. Their general sojourn is on the west shore of the Dead Sea, and some of their members had been heard to say prayers at the tomb of a Jewish rabbi, in the Hebrew language. A rabbi named Gadd fell into their hands, and was robbed of everything, but bewailing his loss in the words commencing "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God," and being overheard, the tribe who had robbed him returned him all the spoil. He endeavoured to induce them to part with a copy of their Scriptures, which he actually saw, but they said that money was of no consequence to them, and that the books were very expensive in transcription.

On Terrestrial Planispheres. By the Chevalier IGNAZIO VILLA.

On the Trade of the Eastern Archipelago with New Guinea and its Islands. By ALFRED R. WALLACE, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S.

The part of New Guinea with which trade is regularly maintained extends from the eastern extremity of the great Geelvink Bay, in about long. 137° E., to very nearly the same longitude on the south coast, a little beyond the river Utanată. This is a coast-line of more than 1200 miles, and it embraces also the islands of Jobie, of Biak and Sook, Waigiou, Salwatty, Batanta, Mysol, and the Ké and Aru Islands, all of which are inhabited by branches of the Papuan race.

From the interior parts of New Guinea the only articles of commercial importance are aromatic barks and wild nutmegs. From the coasts and islands, tripang or bèche-de-mer, pearl-shell, and tortoiseshell are all obtained in abundance, and form the most valuable portion of the trade. Less in quantity and importance are pearls, sago (raw and in cakes), birds of paradise, mats, palm-leaf boxes, and rice in the husk (paddy). These articles are mostly consumed in the East, some (as the aromatic Mussoi bark) in Java, others (the tripang and pearls) in China, the pearlshell being the only article the whole of which finds its way to Europe.

The trade is almost entirely carried on by native prahus from Celebes and the Moluccas-rude vessels, sometimes built entirely without iron, carrying mat-sails on a triangular mast, and altogether incapable of beating against the wind. They therefore make but one voyage a year, going at the beginning of the west monsoon in December and January, and returning with the east monsoon in July and August. The trade is entirely carried on by barter, calicoes, red cotton, bar-iron, choppers, axes, cheap German knives, Chinese crockery, brass wire, coloured beads, silver coins, tobacco, arrack, and opium being the articles chiefly in demand by the natives, some being required in one district, while a different assortment is requisite in another. In some parts, as at Dorey, Mysol, and Aru Islands, trade is carried on with peace and regularity; in others, as Jobie and the neighbourhood of Maclure's Inlet, bargains are made by both parties fully armed and ready, should the negotiations not prove satisfactory, to settle the matter by a deadly combat. In these parts scarcely a year passes but some traders are killed either in open combat or by hidden treachery, and whole crews are often massacred.

To give some idea of the extent of this trade, I may mention that when I visited the Aru Islands in 1857, there were 15 large prahus from Macassar, besides about 100 small ones from various other islands, and I estimated the value of the produce which they took away at about £20,000.

Sago is the staff of life in these countries, and the chief support of all engaged in the New Guinea trade. To see sago manufactured by the natives is an extraordinary sight. A whole tree-trunk, about 20 feet long and 5 feet in circumference, is, by a few days' labour, converted into human food. A good-sized tree will produce 30 bundles of raw sago, weighing about 30 lbs. each bundle, and when baked yielding about 60 cakes of 3 to a pound. Two of these cakes are a meal for a man, or about 5 cakes per day; and as a tree produces 1800 cakes, it gives food for one man for about a year. The labour to produce the raw sago, by breaking up and washing the pithy substance of the trunk, is about 10 days for one man, which labour pro

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