THE RACES OF MANKIND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2003, 4 February 1890, Page 3

THE RACES OF MANKIND.

M. de Quatrefages, the leading French ethnologist, in presenting the second part of his “Introduction to the Study of the Human Races” to the Academy of Sciences, has given an interesting summary of his general conclusions with regard to the origin and distribution of mankind. Neglecting the minor differences, he estimates that there are no few fewer than two distinct races in the human species. All these descend or branch off from three fundamental types —the black, the yellow and the white—which had their origin at the great central mass of Northern Asia, which is thus the cradle of mankink. Representatives of these different types and the races which sprang from them are still to be found there. The whites, according to M. d e Quatrefages, appear to have originated on the west of the central mass, the yellows on the north, and the blacks on

. the south. The whites extended westr ward amd northward, giving birth to three secondary types, the Finnish, the Semetic and the Aryan, if we except the Allophyles, which form a separate group. Their area of distribution is continuous, as is the yellows; because of the extensive land surface of the Eurasian continent. The yellows spread eastward and crossed into America, The whites and yellows checked or blended with each other, producing many varieties of man, The black or negro type, which originated on the south of the central mass, was forced by the attacks of the whites and yellows, to go south into Africa and cast into the Indian Archipelago or Melanesia. The proto-Semites arrested their distribution in the north of Africa, and the mixture of the two races gave rise to the negroid populations. In the centre and south of Africa the blacks continued in their ethnic purity until the infiltration of other races from Europe and the north of Africa in modern times. Those which remained in their original home became blended with the whites and yellows, giving rise to the dravidian populations which pass by shades into the three fundamental types.

| As for the Allophyles, represented " by the race of Cro-Magrion they occupied parts of Europe and JSorth Africa, from which they extended to the Canaries. The three fundamental types also founded themselves in Oceaniea; the Allophylian whites occupying Polynesia,' the blacks Melanesia, the yellows Malasia, The latter were, according to M. de Quarrefages, the last to come into the maritime world. -""'Thp peopling of America dates from period, and is due to of different types white and yellow, blending with the local quatenary races, which also belonged to the yellow type. Europe, since the tertiary ages, has received only Allophylian whites, Finns, and Aryans. The number of races now existing in a pure state is exceedingly restricted, if, indeed, there is a single one which can be accepted as such. Perhaps some little groups, protected by their isolation, auch as the Mincopies, may show an "V- identity of characters attesting their ethnic homogeneity,—Buffalo Express,