The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE
NATURAL HISTORY
OF
THE VARIETIES OF MAN.
THE
NATURAL HISTORY
OF
THE VARIETIES OF MAN.
BY
ROBERT GORDON LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,
LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE;
ONE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENTS OF THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, LONDON;
CORRESPONDING MEMBER TO THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
NEW YORK, ETC.
LONDON:
JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.
M.D.CCCL.
LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. Bentley and Henry Fley,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
TO
EDWIN NORRIS, Esq.,
OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY,
TO WHOSE VALUABLE INFORMATION AND SUGGESTIONS
MANY OF THE STATEMENTS AND OPINIONS OF THE PRESENT VOLUME
OWE THEIR ORIGIN,
The following Pages are Inscribed,
BY HIS FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
London, July 25th, 1850.
PREFACE.
If the simple excellence of a book were a sufficientreason for making it the only one belonging to thesciences which it professed to illustrate, few writerswould be desirous of attempting a systematic workupon the Natural History of their species, after theadmirable Physical History of Mankind, by the late andlamented Dr. Prichard,—a work which even those whoare most willing to defer to the supposed superior attainmentsof Continental scholars, are not afraid toplace on an unapproached eminence in respect to bothour own and other countries. The fact of its beingthe production of one who was at one and the sametime a physiologist amongst physiologists, and a scholaramongst scholars, would have made it this; since thegrand ethnological desideratum required at the time ofits publication, was a work which, by combining thehistorical, the philological, and the anatomical methods,should command the attention of the naturalist, as wellas of the scholar. Still it was a work of a rising ratherthan of a stationary science; and the very stimuluswhich it supplied, created and diffused a spirit of investigation,which—as the author himself would, aboveall men, have desired—rendered subsequent investigationslikely to modify the preceding ones. A subject[Pg viii]that a single book, however encyclopædic, can represent,is scarcely a subject worth taking up in earnest.
Besides this, there are two other reasons of a morespecial and particular nature for the present additionto the literature of Ethnology.
I. For each of the great sections of our species, theaccumulation of facts, even in the eleventh hour, hasout-run the anticipations of the most impatient; indeedso rapidly did it take place during the latter partof Dr. Prichard's own lifetime, that the learnin