at
is not quite the evidence that one would like to have--though it is
not direct testimony--yet it is exceeding good and exceedingly powerful
evidence in its way.
As to the first point, of varieties existing among natural species, I
might appeal to the universal experience of every naturalist, and of any
person who has ever turned any attention at all to the characteristics
of plants and animals in a state of nature; but I may as well take a few
definite cases, and I will begin with Man himself.
I am one of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence
whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a
single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or
even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than
one species of Man. Nevertheless, as you know, just as there are numbers
of varieties in animals, so there are remarkable varieties of men. I
speak not merely of those broad and distinct variations which you see at
a glance. Everybody, of course, knows the difference between a Negro and
a white man, and can tell a Chinaman from an Englishman. They each
have peculiar characteristics of colour and physiognomy; but you must
recollect that the characters of these races go very far deeper--they
extend to the bony structure, and to the characters of that most
important of all organs to us--the brain; so that, among men belonging
to different races, or even within the same race, one man shall have a
brain a third, or half, or even seventy per cent. bigger than another;
and if you take the whole range of human brains, you will find a
variation in some cases of a hundred per cent. Apart from these
variations in the size of the brain, the characters of the skull vary.
Thus if I draw the figures of a Mongul and of a Negro head on the
blackboard, in the case of the last the breadth would be about
seven-tenths, and in the other it would be nine-tenths of the total
length. So that you see there is abundant evidence of variation among
men in their natural condition. And if you turn to other animals there
is just the same thing. The fox, for example, which has a very large
geographical distribution all over Europe, and parts of Asia, and on the
American Continent, varies greatly. There are mostly large foxes in the
North, and smaller ones in the South. In Germany alone, the foresters
reckon some eight different sorts.
Of the tiger, no one supposes that the
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