ciences of Zoology and Botany. If having done this he should betake
himself to some ponderous folio, bulkier than the one which he read
last, but devoted to a subject so specific and limited as to have
scarcely found a place in the general history of organized beings, the
comparison is all the closer. The subject, in its main characteristics,
is the same in both cases; but the difference of the details is
considerable. A topographical map on the scale of a chart of the world,
a manipulation for the microscope as compared with the preparation of a
wax model, are but types and illustrations of the contrast. A small
field requires working after a fashion impossible for a wide farm; often
with different implements, and often with different objects. A
dissertation upon the Negroes of Africa, and a dissertation upon the
Britons of the Welsh Principality, though both ethnological, have but
few questions in common, at least in the present state of our knowledge;
and out of a hundred pages devoted to each, scarcely ten would embody
the same sort of facts. With the Negro, we should search amongst old
travellers and modern missionaries for such exact statements as we might
be fortunate enough to find respecting his geographical position, the
texture of his hair, the shade of his skin, the peculiarities of his
creed, the structure of his language; and well satisfied should we be if
anything at once new and true fell in our way. But in the case of the
Briton all this is already known to the inquirer, and can be conveyed in
a few sentences to the reader. What then remains? A fresh series of
researches, which our very superiority of knowledge has developed;
inquiries which, with an imperfectly known population, would be
impossible. Who speculates to any extent upon such questions as the
degrees of intermixture between the Moors and the true Negroes of Nubia?
Who grapples with such a problem as the date of the occupation of New
Guinea? Such and such-like points are avoided; simply because the _data_
for working them are wanting. Yet with an area like the British Isles,
they are both possible and pertinent. More than this. In such countries
there must either be no ethnology at all, or it must be of the minute
kind, since the primary and fundamental questions, which constitute
nine-tenths of our inquiries elsewhere, are already answered.

Minute ethnology must be more or less speculative--the less the better.
It must be so, however, to so