Thus, all this abundant wealth of money and of vivid life is Nature's interest upon her investment in club-mosses, and the like, so long ago. But what becomes of the coal which is burnt in yielding this interest? Heat comes out of it, light comes out of it, and if we could gather together all that goes up the chimney; and all that remains in the grate of a thoroughly-burnt coal-fire, we should find ourselves in possession of a quantity of carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and mineral matters, exactly equal in weight to the coal. But these are the very matters with which Nature supplied the club-mosses which made the coal. She is paid back principal and interest at the same time; and she straightway invests the carbonic acid, the water, and the ammonia in new forms of life, feeding with them the plants that now live. Thrifty Nature! Surely no prodigal, but most notable of housekeepers!
The marine productions which are commonly known by the names of "Corals" and "Corallines," were thought by the ancients to be sea-weeds, which had the singular property of becoming hard and solid, when they were fished up from their native depths and came into contact with the air.
"Sic et curalium, quo primum contigit auras Tempore durescit: mollis fuit herba sub undis,"
says Ovid (Metam. xv.); and it was not until the seventeenth century that Boccone was emboldened, by personal experience of the facts, to declare that the holders of this belief were no better than "idiots," who had been misled by the softness of the outer coat of the living red coral to imagine that it was soft all through.
Messer Boccone's strong epithet is probably undeserved, as the notion he controverts, in all likelihood, arose merely from the misinterpretation of the strictly true statement which any coral fisherman would make to a curious inquirer; namely, that the outside coat of the red coral is quite soft when it is taken out of the sea. At any rate, he did good service by eliminating this much error from the current notions about coral. But the belief that corals are plants remained, not only in the popular, but in the scientific mind; and it received what appeared to be a striking confirmation from the researches of Marsigli in 1706. For this naturalist, having the opportunity of observing freshly-taken red coral, saw that its branches were beset with what looked like delicate and beautiful flowers, each having eight petals. It was true that these "flowers" could protrude and retract themselves, but their motions were hardly more extensive, or more varied, than those of the leaves of the sensitive plant; and therefore they could not be held to militate against the conclusion so strongly suggested by their form and their grouping upon the branches of a tree-like structure.
Twenty years later, a pupil of Marsigli, the young Marseilles physician, Peyssonel, conceived the desire to study these singular sea-plants, and was sent by the French Government on a mission to the Mediterranean for that purpose. The pupil undertook the investigation full of confidence in the ideas of his master, but being able to see and think for himself, he soon discovered that those ideas by no means altogether corresponded with reality. In an essay entitled "Traité du Corail," which was communicated to the French Academy of Science, but which has never been published, Peyssonel writes:—
"Je fis fleurir le corail dans des vases pleins d'eau de mer, et j'observai que ce que nous croyons être la fleur de cette prétendue plante n'était au vrai, qu'un insecte semblable à une petite Ortie ou Poulpe. J'avais le plaisir de voir remuer les pattes, ou pieds, de cette Ortie, et ayant mis le vase plein d'eau où le corail était à une douce chaleur auprès du feu, tous les petites insectes s'épanouirent … L'Ortie sortie étend les pieds, et forme ce que M. de Marsigli et moi avions pris pour les pétales de la fleur. Le calice de cette prétendue fleur est le corps même de l'animal avancé et sorti hors de la cellule."[1]
[Footnote 1: This extract from Peysonnel's manuscript is given by M. Lacaze Duthiers in his valuable "Histoire Naturelle du Corail" (1866).]
The comparison of the flowers of the coral to a "petite ortie" or "little nettle" is perfectly just, but needs explanation. "Ortie de mer," or "sea-nettle," is, in fact, the French appellation for our "sea-anemone," a creature with which everybody, since the great aquarium mania, must have become familiar, even to the limits of boredom. In 1710, the great naturalist, Réaumur, had written a memoir for the express purpose of demonstrating that these "orties" are animals; and with this important paper Peyssonel must necessarily have been familiar. Therefore, when he declared the "flowers" of the red coral to be little "orties," it was the same thing as saying that they were animals of the same general nature as sea-anemones. But to Peyssonel's contemporaries this was an extremely startling announcement. It was hard to imagine the existence of such a thing as an association of animals into a structure with stem and branches altogether like a plant, and fixed to the soil as a plant is fixed; and the naturalists of that day preferred not to imagine it. Even Réaumur could not bring himself to accept the notion, and France being blessed with Academicians, whose great function (as the late Bishop Wilson and an eminent modern writer have so well shown) is to cause sweetness and light to prevail, and to prevent such unmannerly fellows as Peyssonel from blurting out unedifying truths, they suppressed him; and, as aforesaid, his great work remained in manuscript, and may at this day be consulted by the curious in that state, in the "Bibliothèque du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle." Peyssonel, who evidently was a person of savage and untameable disposition, so far from appreciating the kindness of the Academicians in giving him time to reflect upon the unreasonableness, not to say rudeness, of making public statements in opposition to the views of some of the most distinguished of their body, seems bitterly to have resented the treatment he met with. For he sent all further communications to the Royal Society of London, which never had, and it is to be hoped never will have, anything of an academic constitution; and finally took himself off to Guadaloupe, and became lost to science altogether.
Fifteen or sixteen years after the date of Peyssonel's suppressed paper, the Abbé Trembley published his wonderful researches upon the fresh-waterHydra. Bernard de Jussieu and Guettard followed them up by like inquiries upon the marine sea-anemones and corallines; Réaumur, convinced against his will of the entire justice of Peyssonel's views, adopted them, and made him a half-and-half apology in the preface to the next published volume of the "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Insectes;" and, from this time forth, Peyssonel's doctrine that corals are the work of animal organisms has been part of the body of established scientific truth.
Peyssonel, in the extract from his memoir already cited, compares the flower-like animal of the coral to a "poulpe," which is the French form of the name "polypus,"—"the many-footed,"—which the ancient naturalists gave to the soft-bodied cuttle-fishes, which, like the coral animal, have eight arms, or tentacles, disposed around a central mouth. Réaumur, admitting the analogy indicated by Peyssonel, gave the name ofpolypes, not only to the sea-anemone, the coral animal, and the fresh-waterHydra, but to what are now known as thePolyzoa, and he termed the skeleton which they fabricate a "polypier" or "polypidom."
The progress of discovery, since Réaumur's time, has made us very completely acquainted with the structure and habits of all these polypes. We know that, among the sea-anemones and coral-forming animals, each polype has a mouth leading to a stomach, which is open at its inner end, and thus communicates freely with the general cavity of the body; that the tentacles placed round the mouth are hollow, and that they perform the part of arms in seizing and capturing prey. It is known that many of these creatures are capable of being multiplied by artificial division, the divided halves growing, after a time, into complete and separate animals; and that many are able to perform a very similar process naturally, in such a manner that one polype may, by repeated incomplete divisions, give rise to a sort of sheet, or turf, formed by innumerable connected, and yet independent, descendants. Or, what is still more common, a polype may throw out buds, which are converted into polypes, or branches bearing polypes, until a tree-like mass, sometimes of very considerable size, is formed.
This is what happens in the case of the red coral of commerce. A minute polype, fixed to the rocky bottom of the deep sea, grows up into a branched trunk. The end of every branch and twig is terminated by a polype; and all the polypes are connected together by a fleshy substance, traversed by innumerable canals which place each polype in communication with every other, and carry nourishment to the substance of the supporting stem. It is a sort of natural co-operative store, every polype helping the whole, at the same time as it helps itself. The interior of the stem, like that of the branches, is solidified by the deposition of carbonate of lime in its tissue, somewhat in the same fashion as our own bones are formed of animal matter impregnated with lime salts; and it is this dense skeleton (usually turned deep red by a peculiar colouring matter) cleared of the soft animal investment, as the heart-wood of a tree might be stripped of its bark, which is the red coral.
In the case of the red coral, the hard skeleton belongs to the interior of the stem and branches only; but in the commoner white corals, each polype has a complete skeleton of its own. These polypes ate sometimes solitary, in which case the whole skeleton is represented by a single cup, with partitions radiating from its centre to its circumference. When the polypes formed by budding or division remain associated, the polypidom is sometimes made up of nothing but an aggregation of these cups, while at other times the cups are at once separated and held together, by an intermediate substance, which represents the branches of the red coral. The red coral polype again is a comparatively rare animal, inhabiting a limited area, the skeleton of which has but a very insignificant mass; while the white corals are very common, occur in almost all seas, and form skeletons which are sometimes extremely massive.
With a very few exceptions, both the red and the white coral polypes are, in their adult state, firmly adherent to the sea-bottom; nor do their buds naturally become detached and locomotive. But, in addition to budding and division, these creatures possess the more ordinary methods of multiplication; and, at particular seasons, they give rise to numerous eggs of minute size. Within these eggs the young are formed, and they leave the egg in a condition which has no sort of resemblance to the perfect animal. It is, in fact, a minute oval body, many hundred times smaller than the full-grown creature, and it swims about with great activity by the help of multitudes of little hair-like filaments, called cilia, with which its body is covered. These cilia all lash the water in one direction, and so drive the little body along as if it were propelled by thousands of extremely minute paddles. After enjoying its freedom for a longer or shorter time, and being carried either by the force of its own cilia, or by currents which bear it along, the embryo coral settles down to the bottom, loses its cilia, and becomes fixed to the rock, gradually assuming the polype form and growing up to the size of its parent. As the infant polypes of the coral may retain this free and active condition for many hours, or even days, and as a tidal or other current in the sea may easily flow at the speed of two or even more miles in an hour, it is clear that the embryo must often be transported to very considerable distances from the parent. And it is easily understood how a single polype, which may give rise to hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of embryos, may, by this process of partly active and partly passive migration, cover an immense surface with its offspring. The masses of coral which may be formed by the assemblages of polypes which spring by budding, or by dividing, from a single polype, occasionally attain very considerable dimensions. Such skeletons are sometimes great plates, many feet long and several feet in thickness; or they may form huge half globes, like the brainstone corals, or may reach the magnitude of stout shrubs, or even small trees. There is reason to believe that such masses as these take a long time to form, and hence that the age a polype tree, or polype turf, may attain, may be considerable. But, sooner or later, the coral polypes, like all other things, die; the soft flesh decays, while the skeleton is left as a stony mass at the bottom of the sea, where it retains its integrity for a longer or a shorter time, according as its position affords it more or less protection from the wear and tear of the waves.
The polypes which give rise to the white coral are found, as has been said, in the seas of all parts of the world; but in the temperate and cold oceans they are scattered and comparatively small in size, so that the skeletons of those which die do not accumulate in any considerable quantity. But it is otherwise in the greater part of the ocean which lies in the warmer parts of the world, comprised within a distance of about 1,800 miles on each side of the equator. Within the zone thus bounded, by far the greater part of the ocean is inhabited by coral polypes, which not only form very strong and large skeletons, but associate together into great masses, like the thickets and the meadow turf, or, better still, the accumulations of peat, to which plants give rise on the dry land. These masses of stony matter, heaped up beneath the waters of the ocean, become as dangerous to mariners as so much ordinary rock, and to these, as to common rock ridges, the seaman gives the name of "reefs."
Such coral reefs cover many thousand square miles in the Pacific and in the Indian Oceans. There is one reef, or rather great series of reefs, called the Barrier Reef, which stretches, almost continuously, for more than 1,100 miles off the east coast of Australia. Multitudes of the island in the Pacific are either reefs themselves, or are surrounded by reefs. The Red Sea is in many parts almost a maze of such reefs; and they abound no less in the West Indies, along the coast of Florida, and even as far north as the Bahama Islands. But it is a very remarkable circumstance that, within the area of what we may call the "coral zone," there are no coral reefs upon the west coast of America, nor upon the west coast of Africa; and it is a general fact that the reefs are interrupted, or absent, opposite the mouths of great rivers. The causes of this apparent caprice in the distribution of coral reefs are not far to seek. The polypes which fabricate them require for their vigorous growth a temperature which must not fall below 68 degrees Fahrenheit all the year round, and this temperature is only to be found within the distance on each side of the equator which has been mentioned, or thereabouts. But even within the coral zone this degree of warmth is not everywhere to be had. On the west coast of America, and on the corresponding coast of Africa, currents of cold water from the icy regions which surround the South Pole set northward, and it appears to be due to their cooling influence that the sea in these regions is free from the reef builders. Again, the coral polypes cannot live in water which is rendered brackish by floods from the land, or which is perturbed by mud from the same source, and hence it is that they cease to exist opposite the mouths of rivers, which damage them in both these ways.
Such is the general distribution of the reef-building corals, but there are some very interesting and singular circumstances to be observed in the conformation of the reefs, when we consider them individually. The reefs, in fact, are of three different kinds; some of them stretch out from the shore, almost like a prolongation of the beach, covered only by shallow water, and in the case of an island, surrounding it like a fringe of no considerable breadth. These are termed "fringing reefs." Others are separated by a channel which may attain a width of many miles, and a depth of twenty or thirty fathoms or more, from the nearest land; and when this land is an island, the reef surrounds it like a low wall, and the sea between the reef and the land is, as it were, a moat inside this wall. Such reefs as these are called "encircling" when they surround an island; and "barrier" reefs, when they stretch parallel with the coast of a continent. In both these cases there is ordinary dry land inside the reef, and separated from it only by a narrower or a wider, a shallower or a deeper, space of sea, which is called a "lagoon," or "inner passage." But there is a third kind of reef, of very common occurrence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, which goes by the name of an "Atoll." This is, to all intents and purposes, an encircling reef, without anything to encircle; or, in other words, without an island in the middle of its lagoon. The atoll has exactly the appearance of a vast, irregularly oval, or circular, breakwater, enclosing smooth water in its midst. The depth of the water in the lagoon rarely exceeds twenty or thirty fathoms, but, outside the reef, it deepens with great rapidity to 200 or 300 fathoms. The depth immediately outside the barrier, or encircling, reefs, may also be very considerable; but, at the outer edge of a fringing reef, it does not amount usually to more than twenty or twenty-five fathoms; in other words, from 120 to 150 feet.
Thus, if the water of the ocean could be suddenly drained away, we should see the atolls rising from the sea-bed like vast truncated cones, and resembling so many volcanic craters, except that their sides would be steeper than those of an ordinary volcano. In the case of the encircling reefs, the cone, with the enclosed island, would look like Vesuvius with Monte Nuovo within the old crater of Somma; while, finally, the island with a fringing reef would have the appearance of an ordinary hill, or mountain, girded by a vast parapet, within which would lie a shallow moat. And the dry bed of the Pacific might afford grounds for an inhabitant of the moon to speculate upon the extraordinary subterranean activity to which these vast and numerous "craters" bore witness!
When the structure of a fringing reef is investigated, the bottom of the lagoon is found to be covered with fine whitish mud, which results from the breaking up of the dead corals. Upon this muddy floor there lie, here and there, growing corals, or occasionally great blocks of dead coral, which have been torn by storms from the outer edge of the reef, and washed into the lagoon. Shell-fish and worms of various kinds abound; and fish, some of which prey upon the coral, sport in the deeper pools. But the corals which are to be seen growing in the shallow waters of the lagoon are of a different kind from those which abound on the outer edge of the reef, and of which the reef is built up. Close to the seaward edge of the reef, over which, even in calm weather, a surf almost always breaks, the coral rock is encrusted with a thick coat of a singular vegetable organism, which contains a great deal of lime—the so-calledNullipora. Beyond this, in the part of the edge of the reef which is always covered by the breaking waves, the living, true, reef—polypes make their appearance; and, in different forms, coat the steep seaward face of the reef to a depth of 100 or even 150 feet. Beyond this depth the sounding-lead rests, not upon the wall-like face of the reef, but on the ordinary shelving sea-bottom. And the distance to which a fringing reef extends from the land corresponds with that at which the sea has a depth of twenty or five-and-twenty fathoms.
If, as we have supposed, the sea could be suddenly withdrawn from around an island provided with a fringing reef, such as the Mauritius, the reef would present the aspect of a terrace, its seaward face, 100 feet or more high, blooming with the animal flowers of the coral, while its surface would be hollowed out into a shallow and irregular moat-like excavation.
The coral mud, which occupies the bottom of the lagoon, and with which all the interstices of the coral skeletons which accumulate to form the reef are filled up, does not proceed from the washing action of the waves alone; innumerable fishes, and other creatures which prey upon the coral, add a very important contribution of finely-triturated calcareous matter; and the corals and mud becoming incorporated together, gradually harden and give rise to a sort of limestone rock, which may vary a good deal in texture. Sometimes it remains friable and chalky, but, more often, the infiltration of water, charged with carbonic acid, dissolves some of the calcareous matter, and deposits it elsewhere in the interstices of the nascent rock, thus glueing and cementing the particles together into a hard mass; or it may even dissolve the carbonate of lime more extensively, and re-deposit it in a crystalline form. On the beach of the lagoon, where the coral sand is washed into layers by the action of the waves, its grains become thus fused together into strata of a limestone, so hard that they ring when struck with a hammer, and inclined at a gentle angle, corresponding with that of the surface of the beach. The hard parts of the many animals which live upon the reef become imbedded in this coral limestone, so that a block may be full of shells of bivalves and univalves, or of sea-urchins; and even sometimes encloses the eggs of turtles in a state of petrifaction. The active and vigorous growth of the reef goes on only at the seaward margins, where the polypes are exposed to the wash of the surf, and are thereby provided with an abundant supply of air and of food. The interior portion of the reef may be regarded as almost wholly an accumulation of dead skeletons. Where a river comes down from the land there is a break in the reef, for the reasons which have been already mentioned.
The origin and mode of formation of a fringing reef, such as that just described, are plain enough. The embryos of the coral polypes have fixed themselves upon the submerged shore of the island, as far out as they could live, namely, to a depth of twenty or twenty-five fathoms. One generation has succeeded another, building itself up upon the dead skeletons of its predecessor. The mass has been consolidated by the infiltration of coral mud, and hardened by partial solution and redeposition, until a great rampart of coral rock 100 or 150 feet high on its seaward face has been formed all round the island, with only such gaps as result from the outflow of rivers, in the place of sally-ports.
The structure of the rocky accumulation in the encircling reefs and in the atolls is essentially the same as in the fringing reef. But, in addition to the differences of depth inside and out, they present some other peculiarities. These reefs, and especially the atolls, are usually interrupted at one part of their circumference, and this part is always situated on the leeward side of the reef, or that which is the more sheltered side. Now, as all these reefs are situated within the region in which the trade-winds prevail, it follows that, on the north side of the equator, where the trade-wind is a north-easterly wind, the opening of the reef is on the south-west side: while in the southern hemisphere, where the trade-winds blow from the south-east, the opening lies to the north-west. The curious practical result follows from this structure, that the lagoons of these reefs really form admirable harbours, if a ship can only get inside them. But the main difference between the encircling reefs and the atolls, on the one hand, and the fringing reefs on the other, lies in the fact of the much greater depth of water on the seaward faces of the former. As a consequence of this fact, the whole of this face is not, as it is in the case of the fringing reef, covered with living coral polypes. For, as we have seen, these polypes cannot live at a greater depth than about twenty-five fathoms; and actual observation has shown that while, down to this depth, the sounding-lead will bring up branches of live coral from the outer wall of such a reef, at a greater depth it fetches to the surface nothing but dead coral and coral sand. We must, therefore, picture to ourselves an atoll, or an encircling reef, as fringed for 100 feet, or more, from its summit, with coral polypes busily engaged in fabricating coral; while, below this comparatively narrow belt, its surface is a bare and smooth expanse of coral sand, supported upon and within a core of coral limestone. Thus, if the bed of the Pacific were suddenly laid bare, as was just now supposed, the appearance of the reef-mountains would be exactly the reverse of that presented by many high mountains on land. For these are white with snow at the top, while their bases are clothed with an abundant and gaudily-coloured vegetation. But the coral cones would look grey and barren below, while their summits would be gay with a richly-coloured parterre of flower-like coral polypes.
The practical difficulties of sounding upon, and of bringing up portions of, the seaward face of an atoll or of an encircling reef, are so great, in consequence of the constant and dangerous swell which sets towards it, that no exact information concerning the depth to which the reefs are composed of coral has yet been obtained. There is no reason to doubt, however, that the reef-cone has the same structure from its summit to its base, and that its sea-wall is throughout mainly composed of dead coral.
And now arises a serious difficulty. If the coral polypes cannot live at a greater depth than 100 or 150 feet, how can they have built up the base of the reef-cone, which may be 2,000 feet, or more, below the surface of the sea?
In order to get over this objection, it was at one time supposed that the reef-building polypes had settled upon the summits of a chain of submarine mountains. But what is there in physical geography to justify the assumption of the existence of a chain of mountains stretching for 1,000 miles or more, and so nearly of the same height, that none should rise above the level of the sea, nor fall 150 feet below that level?
How again, on this hypothesis, are atolls to be accounted for, unless, as some have done, we take refuge in the wild supposition that every atoll corresponds with the crater of a submarine volcano? And what explanation does it afford of the fact that, in some parts of the ocean, only atolls and encircling reefs occur, while others present none but fringing reefs?
These and other puzzling facts remained insoluble until the publication, in the year 1840, of Mr. Darwin's famous work on coral reefs; in which a key was given to all the difficult problems connected with the subject, and every difficulty was shown to be capable of solution by deductive reasoning from a happy combination of certain well-established geological and biological truths. Mr. Darwin, in fact, showed, that so long as the level of the sea remains unaltered in any area in which coral reefs are being formed, or if the level of the sea relatively to that of the land is falling, the only reefs which can be formed are fringing reefs. While if, on the contrary, the level of the sea is rising relatively to that of the land, at a rate not faster than that at which the upward growth of the coral can keep pace with it, the reef will gradually pass from the condition of a fringing, into that of an encircling or barrier reef. And, finally, that if the relative level of the sea rise so much that the encircled land is completely submerged, the reef must necessarily pass into the condition of an atoll.
For, suppose the relative level of the sea to remain stationary, after a fringing reef has reached that distance from the land at which the depth of water amounts to 150 feet. Then the reef cannot extend seaward by the migration of coral germs, because these coral germs would find the bottom of the sea to be too deep for them to live in. And the only manner in which the reef could extend outwards, would be by the gradual accumulation, at the foot of its seaward face, of a talus of coral fragments torn off by the violence of the waves, which talus might, in course of time, become high enough to bring its upper surface within the limits of coral growth, and in that manner provide a sort of factitious sea-bottom upon which the coral embryos might perch. If, on the other hand, the level of the sea were slowly and gradually lowered, it is clear that the parts of its bottom originally beyond the limit of coral growth, would gradually be brought within the required distance of the surface, and thus the reef might be indefinitely extended. But this process would give rise neither to an encircling reef nor to an atoll, but to a broad belt of upheaved coral rock, increasing the dimensions of the dry land, and continuous seawards with the fresh fringing reef.
Suppose, however, that the sea-level rose instead of falling, at the same slow and gradual rate at which we know it to be rising in some parts of the world—not more, in fact, than a few inches, or, at most, a foot or two, in a hundred years. Then, while the reef would be unable to extend itself seaward, the sea-bottom outside it being gradually more and more removed from the depth at which the life of the coral polypes is possible, it would be able to grow upwards as fast as the sea rose. But the growth would take place almost exclusively around the circumference of the reef, this being the only region in which the coral polypes would find the conditions favourable for their existence. The bottom of the lagoon would be raised, in the main, only by the coraldébrisand coral mud, formed in the manner already described; consequently, the margins of the reef would rise faster than the bottom, or, in other words, the lagoon would constantly become deeper. And, at the same time, it would gradually increase in breadth; as the rising sea, covering more and more of the land, would occupy a wider space between the edge of the reef and what remained of the land. Thus the rising sea would eventually convert a large island with a fringing reef, into a small island surrounded by an encircling reef. And it will be obvious that when the rising of the sea has gone so far as completely to cover the highest points of the island, the reef will have passed into the condition of an atoll.
But how is it possible that the relative level of the land and sea should be altered to this extent? Clearly, only in one of two ways: either the sea must have risen over those areas which are now covered by atolls and encircling reefs; or, the land upon which the sea rests must have been depressed to a corresponding extent.
If the sea has risen, its rise must have taken place over the whole world simultaneously, and it must have risen to the same height over all parts of the coral zone. Grounds have been shown for the belief that the general level of the sea may have been different at different times; it has been suggested, for example, that the accumulation of ice about the poles during one of the cold periods of the earth's history, necessarily implies a diminution in the volume of the sea proportioned to the amount of its water thus permanently locked up in the Arctic and Antarctic ice-cellars; while, in the warm periods, the greater or less disappearance of the polar ice-cap implies a corresponding addition of water to the ocean. And no doubt this reasoning must be admitted to be sound in principle; though it is very hard to say what practical effect the additions and subtractions thus made have had on the level of the ocean; inasmuch as such additions and subtractions might be either intensified or nullified, by contemporaneous changes in the level of the land. And no one has yet shown that any such great melting of polar ice, and consequent raising of the level of the water of the ocean, has taken place since the existing atolls began to be formed.
In the absence of any evidence that the sea has ever risen to the extent required to give rise to the encircling reefs and the atolls, Mr. Darwin adopted the opposite hypothesis, viz. that the land has undergone extensive and slow depression in those localities in which these structures exist.
It seems, at first, a startling paradox, to suppose that the land is less fixed than the sea; but that such is the case is the uniform testimony of geology. Beds of sandstone or limestone, thousands of feet thick, and all full of marine remains, occur in various parts of the earth's surface, and prove, beyond a doubt, that when these beds were formed, that portion of the sea-bottom which they then occupied underwent a slow and gradual depression to a distance which cannot have been less than the thickness of those beds, and may have been very much greater. In supposing, therefore, that the great areas of the Pacific and of the Indian Ocean, over which atolls and encircling reefs are found scattered, have undergone a depression of some hundreds, or, it may be, thousands of feet, Mr. Darwin made a supposition which had nothing forced or improbable, but was entirely in accordance with what we know to have taken place over similarly extensive areas, in other periods of the world's history. But Mr. Darwin subjected his hypothesis to an ingenious indirect test. If his view be correct, it is clear that neither atolls, nor encircling reefs, should be found in those portions of the ocean in which we have reason to believe, on independent grounds, that the sea-bottom has long been either stationary, or slowly rising. Now it is known that, as a general rule, the level of the land is either stationary, or is undergoing a slow upheaval, in the neighbourhood of active volcanoes; and, therefore, neither atolls nor encircling reefs ought to be found in regions in which volcanoes are numerous and active. And this turns out to be the case. Appended to Mr. Darwin's great work on coral reefs, there is a map on which atolls and encircling reefs are indicated by one colour, fringing reefs by another, and active volcanoes by a third. And it is at once obvious that the lines of active volcanoes lie around the margins of the areas occupied by the atolls and the encircling reefs. It is exactly as if the upheaving volcanic agencies had lifted up the edges of these great areas, while their centres had undergone a corresponding depression. An atoll area may, in short, be pictured as a kind of basin, the margins of which have been pushed up by the subterranean forces, to which the craters of the volcanoes have, at intervals, given vent.
Thus we must imagine the area of the Pacific now covered by the Polynesian Archipelago, as having been, at some former time, occupied by large islands, or, may be, by a great continent, with the ordinarily diversified surface of plain, and hill, and mountain chain. The shores of this great land were doubtless fringed by coral reefs; and, as it slowly underwent depression, the hilly regions, converted into islands, became, at first, surrounded by fringing reefs, and then, as depression went on, these became converted into encircling reefs, and these, finally, into atolls, until a maze of reefs and coral-girdled islets took the place of the original land masses.
Thus the atolls and the encircling reefs furnish us with clear, though indirect, evidence of changes in the physical geography of large parts of the earth's surface; and even, as my lamented friend, the late Professor Jukes, has suggested, give us indications of the manner in which some of the most puzzling facts connected with the distribution of animals have been brought about. For example, Australia and New Guinea are separated by Torres Straits, a broad belt of sea 100 or 120 miles wide. Nevertheless, there is in many respects a curious resemblance between the land animals which inhabit New Guinea and the land animals which inhabit Australia. But, at the same time, the marine shell-fish which are found in the shallow waters of the shores of New Guinea, are quite different from those which are met with upon the coasts of Australia. Now, the eastern end of Torres Straits is full of atolls, which, in fact, form the northern termination of the Great Barrier Reef which skirts the eastern coast of Australia. It follows, therefore, that the eastern end of Torres Straits is an area of depression, and it is very possible, and on many grounds highly probable, that, in former times, Australia and New Guinea were directly connected together, and that Torres Straits did not exist. If this were the case, the existence of cassowaries and of marsupial quadrupeds, both in New Guinea and in Australia, becomes intelligible; while the difference between the littoral molluscs of the north and the south shores of Torres Straits is readily explained by the great probability that, when the depression in question took place, and what was, at first, an arm of the sea became converted into a strait separating Australia from New Guinea, the northern shore of this new sea became tenanted with marine animals from the north, while the southern shore was peopled by immigrants from the already existing marine Australian fauna.
Inasmuch as the growth of the reef depends upon that of successive generations of coral polypes, and as each generation takes a certain time to grow to its full size, and can only separate its calcareous skeleton from the water in which it lives at a certain rate, it is clear that the reefs are records not only of changes in physical geography, but of the lapse of time. It is by no means easy, however, to estimate the exact value of reef-chronology, and the attempts which have been made to determine the rate at which a reef grows vertically, have yielded anything but precise results. A cautious writer, Mr. Dana, whose extensive study of corals and coral reefs makes him an eminently competent judge, states his conclusion in the following terms:—
"The rate of growth of the common branching madrepore is not over one and a half inches a year. As the branches are open, this would not be equivalent to more than half an inch in height of solid coral for the whole surface covered by the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone. But a coral plantation has large bare patches without corals, and the coral sands are widely distributed by currents, part of them to depths over one hundred feet where there are no living corals; not more than one-sixth of the surface of a reef region is, in fact, covered with growing species. This reduces the three-eighths toone-sixteenth. Shells and other organic relics may contribute one-fourth as much as corals. At the outside, the average upward increase of the whole reef-ground per year would not exceedone-eighthof an inch.
"Now some reefs are at least two thousand feet thick, which at one-eighth of an inch a year, corresponds to one hundred and ninety-two thousand years."[1]
[Footnote 1: Dana, "Manual of Geology," p. 591.]
Halve, or quarter, this estimate if you will, in order to be certain of erring upon the right side, and still there remains a prodigious period during which the ancestors of the existing coral polypes have been undisturbedly at work; and during which, therefore, the climatal conditions over the coral area must have been much what they are now.
And all this lapse of time has occurred within the most recent period of the history of the earth. The remains of reefs formed by coral polypes of different kinds from those which exist now, enter largely into the composition of the limestones of the Jurassic period; and still more widely different coral polypes have contributed their quota to the vast thickness of the carboniferous and Devonian strata. Then as regards the latter group of rocks in America, the high authority already quoted tells us:—
"The Upper Helderberg period is eminently the coral reef period of the palaeozoic ages. Many of the rocks abound in coral, and are as truly coral reefs as the modern reefs of the Pacific. The corals are sometimes standing on the rocks in the position they had when growing: others are lying in fragments, as they were broken and heaped by the waves; and others were reduced to a compact limestone by the finer trituration before consolidation into rock. This compact variety is the most common kind among the coral reef rocks of the present seas; and it often contains but few distinct fossils, although formed in water that abounded in life. At the fall of the Ohio, near Louisville, there is a magnificent display of the old reef. HemisphericalFavosites, five or six feet in diameter, lie there nearly as perfect as when they were covered by their flower-like polypes; and besides these, there are various branching corals, and a profusion ofCyathophiyllia, or cup-corals."[1]
[Footnote 1: Dana, "Manual of Geology," p. 272.]
Thus, in all the great periods of the earth's history of which we know anything, a part of the then living matter has had the form of polypes, competent to separate from the water of the sea the carbonate of lime necessary for their own skeletons. Grain by grain, and particle by particle, they have built up vast masses of rock, the thickness of which is measured by hundreds of feet, and their area by thousands of square miles. The slow oscillations of the crust of the earth, producing great changes in the distribution of land and water, have often obliged the living matter of the coral-builders to shift the locality of its operations; and, by variation and adaptation to these modifications of condition, its forms have as often changed. The work it has done in the past is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain; and, if there were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general constancy of the operations of Nature in this world, through periods of almost inconceivable duration.
Ethonology is the science which determines the distinctive characters of the persistent modifications of mankind; which ascertains the distribution of those modifications in present and past times, and seeks to discover the causes, or conditions of existence, both of the modifications and of their distribution. I say "persistent" modifications, because, unless incidentally, ethnology has nothing to do with chance and transitory peculiarities of human structure. And I speak of "persistent modifications" or "stocks" rather than of "varieties," or "races," or "species," because each of these last well-known terms implies, on the part of its employer, a preconceived opinion touching one of those problems, the solution of which is the ultimate object of the science; and in regard to which, therefore, ethnologists are especially bound to keep their minds open and their judgments freely balanced.
Ethnology, as thus defined, is a branch of anthropology, the great science which unravels the complexities of human structure; traces out the relations of man to other animals; studies all that is especially human in the mode in which man's complex functions are performed; and searches after the conditions which have determined his presence in the world. And anthropology is a section of zoology, which again is the animal half of biology—the science of life and living things.
Such is the position of ethnology, such are the objects of the ethnologist. The paths or methods, by following which he may hope to reach his goal, are diverse. He may work at man from the point of view of the pure zoologist, and investigate the anatomical and physiological peculiarities of Negroes, Australians, or Mongolians, just as he would inquire into those of pointers, terriers, and turnspits,—"persistent modifications" of man's almost universal companion. Or he may seek aid from researches into the most human manifestation of humanity—language; and assuming that what is true of speech is true of the speaker—a hypothesis as questionable in science as it is in ordinary life—he may apply to mankind themselves the conclusions drawn from a searching analysis of their words and grammatical forms.
Or, the ethnologist may turn to the study of the practical life of men; and relying upon the inherent conservatism and small inventiveness of untutored mankind, he may hope to discover in manners and customs, or in weapons, dwellings, and other handiwork, a clue to the origin of the resemblances and differences of nations. Or, he may resort to that kind of evidence which is yielded by history proper, and consists of the beliefs of men concerning past events, embodied in traditional, or in written, testimony. Or, when that thread breaks, archaeology, which is the interpretation of the unrecorded remains of man's works, belonging to the epoch since the world has reached its present condition, may still guide him. And, when even the dim light of archaeology fades, there yet remains paleontology, which, in these latter years, has brought to daylight once more the exuvia of ancient populations, whose world was not our world, who have been buried in river beds immemorially dry, or carried by the rush of waters into caves, inaccessible to inundation since the dawn of tradition.
Along each, or all, of these paths the ethnologist may press towards his goal; but they are not equally straight, or sure, or easy to tread. The way of palaeontology has but just been laid open to us. Archaeological and historical investigations are of great value for all those peoples whose ancient state has differed widely from their present condition, and who have the good or evil fortune to possess a history. But on taking a broad survey of the world, it is astonishing how few nations present either condition. Respecting five-sixths of the persistent modifications of mankind, history and archaeology are absolutely silent. For half the rest, they might as well be silent for anything that is to be made of their testimony. And, finally, when the question arises as to what was the condition of mankind more than a paltry two or three thousand years ago, history and archaeology are, for the most part, mere dumb dogs. What light does either of these branches of knowledge throw on the past of the man of the New World, if we except the Central Americans and the Peruvians; on that of the Africans, save those of the valley of the Nile and a fringe of the Mediterranean; on that of all the Polynesian, Australian, and central Asiatic peoples, the former of whom probably, and the last certainly, were, at the dawn of history, substantially what they are now? While thankfully accepting what history has to give him, therefore, the ethnologist must not look for too much from her.
Is more to be expected from inquiries into the customs and handicrafts of men? It is to be feared not. In reasoning from identity of custom to identity of stock the difficulty always obtrudes itself, that the minds of men being everywhere similar, differing in quality and quantity but not in kind of faculty, like circumstances must tend to produce like contrivances; at any rate, so long as the need to be met and conquered is of a very simple kind. That two nations use calabashes or shells for drinking-vessels, or that they employ spears, or clubs, or swords and axes of stone and metal as weapons and implements, cannot be regarded as evidence that these two nations had a common origin, or even that intercommunication ever took place between them; seeing that the convenience of using calabashes or shells for such purposes, and the advantage of poking an enemy with a sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, must be early forced by nature upon the mind of even the stupidest savage. And when he had found out the use of a stick, he would need no prompting to discover the value of a chipped or wetted stone, or an angular piece of native metal, for the same object. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether the chances are not greatly against independent peoples arriving at the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow; which last, if one comes to think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus; and the tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as these, and of such strange customs as betel-chewing and tobacco-smoking, may afford valuable ethnological hints.
Since the time of Leibnitz, and guided by such men as Humboldt, AbelRemusat, and Klaproth, Philology has taken far higher ground. ThusPrichard affirms that "the history of nations, termed Ethnology, mustbe mainly founded on the relations of their languages."
An eminent living philologer, August Schleicher, in a recent essay, puts forward the claims of his science still more forcibly:—
"If, however, language is the human [Greek: kat ezochhên], the suggestion arises whether it should not form the basis of any scientific systematic arrangement of mankind; whether the foundation of the natural classification of the genus Homo has not been discovered in it.
"How little constant are cranial peculiarities and other so-called race characters! Language, on the other hand, is always a perfectly constant diagnostic. A German may occasionally compete in hair and prognathism with a negro, but a negro language will never be his mother tongue. Of how little importance for mankind the so-called race characters are, is shown by the fact that speakers of languages belonging to one and the same linguistic family may exhibit the peculiarities of various races. Thus the settled Osmanli Turk exhibits Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric Turks exemplify the Mongol type. On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque, and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like that of which other vital products are susceptible, especially when viewed from their morphological side…. The externally visible structure of the cerebral and facial skeletons, and of the body generally, is less important than that no less material but infinitely more delicate corporeal structure, the function of which is speech. I conceive, therefore, that the natural classification of languages is also the natural classification of mankind. With language, moreover, all the higher manifestations of man's vital activity are closely interwoven, so that these receive due recognition in and by that of speech."[1]
[Footnote 1: August Schleicher. Ueber die Bedeutung der Sprache für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen, pp. 16-18. Weimar, 1858.]
Without the least desire to depreciate the value of philology as an adjuvant to ethnology, I must venture to doubt, with Rudolphi, Desmoulins, Crawfurd, and others, its title to the leading position claimed for it by the writers whom I have just quoted. On the contrary, it seems to me obvious that, though, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, unity of languages may afford a certain presumption in favour of the unity of stock of the peoples speaking those languages, it cannot be held to prove that unity of stock, unless philologers are prepared to demonstrate, that no nation can lose its language and acquire that of a distinct nation, without a change of blood corresponding with the change of language. Desmoulins long ago put this argument exceedingly well:—
"Let us imagine the recurrence of one of those slow, or sudden, political revolutions, or say of those secular changes which among different people and at different epochs have annihilated historical monuments and even extinguished tradition. In that case, the evidence, now so clear, that the negroes of Hayti were slaves imported by a French colony, who, by the very effect of the subordination involved in slavery, lost their own diverse languages and adopted that of their masters, would vanish. And metaphysical philosophers, observing the identity of Haytian French with that spoken on the shores of the Seine and the Loire, would argue that the men of St. Domingo with woolly heads, black and oily skins, small calves, and slightly bent knees, are of the same race, descended from the same parental stock, as the Frenchmen with silky brown, chestnut, or fair hair, and white skins. For they would say, their languages are more similar than French is to German or Spanish."[1]
[Footnote 1: Desmoulins, "Histoire Naturelle des Races Humaines," p. 345. 1826.]
It must not be imagined that the case put by Desmoulins is a merely hypothetical one. Events precisely similar to the transport of a body of Africans to the West India Islands, indeed, cannot have happened among uncivilized races, but similar results have followed the importation of bodies of conquerors among an enslaved people over and over again. There is hardly a country in Europe in which two or more nations speaking widely different tongues have not become intermixed; and there is hardly a language of Europe of which we have any right to think that its structure affords a just indication of the amount of that intermixture.
As Dr. Latham has well said:—
"It is certain that the language of England is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and that the remains of the original Keltic are unimportant. It is by no means so certain that the blood of Englishmen is equally Germanic. A vast amount of Kelticism, not found in our tongue, very probably exists in our pedigrees. The ethnology of France is still more complicated. Many writers make the Parisian a Roman on the strength of his language; whilst others make him a Kelt on the strength of certain moral characteristics, combined with the previous Kelticism of the original Gauls. Spanish and Portuguese, as languages, are derivations from the Latin; Spain and Portugal, as countries, are Iberic, Latin, Gothic, and Arab, in different proportions. Italian is modern Latin all the world over; yet surely there must be much Keltic blood in Lombardy, and much Etruscan intermixture in Tuscany.
"In the ninth century every man between the Elbe and theNiemen spoke some Slavonic dialect; they now nearly all speakGerman. Surely the blood is less exclusively Gothic than thespeech."[1]
[Footnote 1: Latham, "Man and his Migrations," p. 171.]
In other words, what philologer, if he had nothing but the vocabulary and grammar of the French and English languages to guide him, would dream of the real causes of the unlikeness of a Norman to a Provençal, of an Orcadian to a Cornishman? How readily might he be led to suppose that the different climatal conditions to which these speakers of one tongue have so long been exposed, have caused their physical differences; and how little would he suspect that these are due (as we happen to know they are) to wide differences of blood.
Few take duly into account the evidence which exists as to the ease with which unlettered savages gain or lose a language. Captain Erskine, in his interesting "Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific," especially remarks upon the "avidity with which the inhabitants of the polyglot islands of Melanesia, from New Caledonia to the Solomon Islands, adopt the improvements of a more perfect language than their own, which different causes and accidental communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that "among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon only to five."
Yet how much philological reasoning in favour of the affinity or diversity of two distinct peoples has been based on the mere comparison of numerals!
But the most instructive example of the fallacy which may attach to merely philological reasonings, is that afforded by the Feejeans, who are, physically, so intimately connected with the adjacent Negritos of New Caledonia, &c., that no one can doubt to what stock they belong, and who yet, in the form and substance of their language, are Polynesian. The case is as remarkable as if the Canary Islands should have been found to be inhabited by negroes speaking Arabic, or some other clearly Semitic dialect, as their mother tongue. As it happens, the physical peculiarities of the Feejeans are so striking, and the conditions under which they live are so similar to those of the Polynesians, that no one has ventured to suggest that they are merely modified Polynesians—a suggestion which could otherwise certainly have been made. But if languages may be thus transferred from one stock to another, without any corresponding intermixture of blood, what ethnological value has philology?—what security does unity of language afford us that the speakers of that language may not have sprung from two, or three, or a dozen, distinct sources?
Thus we come, at last, to the purely zoological method, from which it is not unnatural to expect more than from any other, seeing that, after all, the problems of ethnology are simply those which are presented to the zoologist by every widely distributed animal he studies. The father of modern zoology seems to have had no doubt upon this point. At the twenty-eighth page of the standard twelfth edition of the "Systema Naturae," in fact, we find:—
Dentes primores incisores: superiores IV. paralleli, mammae pectorales II.
1. HOMO. Nosce te ipsum. Sapiens. 1. H. diurnus:varians cultura, loco.Ferus. Tetrapus, mutus, hirsutus.
* * * * *
Americanus[Greek: a]. Rufus, cholericus, rectus—Pilisnigris, rectis, crassis—Naribuspatulis—Facieephelitica:Mentosubimberbi.Pertinax, contentus, liber.Pingitse lineis daedaleis rubris.RegiturConsuetudine.
Europaeus[Greek: b]. Albus sauguineus torosus.Pilisflavescentibus, prolixis.Oculiscaeruleis.Levis, argutus, inventor.TegiturVestimentis arctis.RegiturRitibus.
Asiaticus[Greek: g]. Luridus, melancholicus, rigidus.Pilisnigricantibus.Oculisfuscis.Severus, fastuosus, avarus.TegiturIndumentis laxis.RegiturOpinionibus.
Afer[Greek: d]. Niger, phlegmaticus, laxus.Pilisatris, contortuplicatis.Cuteholosericea.Nasosimo.Labiistumidis.Feminissinus pudoris.Mammaelactantes prolixae.Vafer, segnis, negligens.Ungitse pingui.RegiturArbitrio.
Monstrosus[Greek: e]. Solo (a) et arte (b c) variat.:a.Alpiniparvi, agiles, timidi.Patagonicimagni, segnes.b.Monorchidesut minus fertiles:Hottentotti.Junceaepuellae, abdomine attenuato:Europoeae.c.Macrocephalicapiti conico: Chinenses.Plagiocephalicapite antice compresso:Canadenses.
Turn a few pages further on in the same volume, and there appears, with a fine impartiality in the distribution of capitals and sub-divisional headings:—
Dentes primores superiores sex, acutiusculi. Canini solitarii.
* * * * *
12. CANIS.Dentes primoressuperiores VI.: laterales longiores distantes: intermedii lobati. Inferiores VI.: laterales lobati.Laniariisolitarii, incurvati. Molares VI. s. VII. (pluresve quam in reliquis).
familiaris[Greek: i]. C. cauda (sinistrorsum) recurvata….
domesticus[Greek: a]. auriculis erectis, cauda subtus lanata.
sagax[Greek: b]. auriculis pendulis, digito spurio adtibias posticas.
grajus[Greek: g]. magnitudine lupi, trunco curvato, rostroattenuato, &c. &c.
Linnaeus' definition of what he considers to be mere varieties of the species Man are, it will be observed, as completely free from any allusion to linguistic peculiarities as those brief and pregnant sentences in which he sketches the characters of the varieties of the species Dog. "Pilis nigris, naribus patulis" may be set against "auriculis erectis, cauda subtus lanata;" while the remarks on the morals and manners of the human subject seem as if they were thrown in merely by way of makeweight.
Buffon, Blumenbach (the founder of ethnology as a special science), Rudolphi, Bory de St. Vincent, Desmoulins, Cuvier, Retzius, indeed I may say all the naturalists proper, have dealt with man from a no less completely zoological point of view; while, as might have been expected, those who have been least naturalists, and most linguists, have most neglected the zoological method, the neglect culminating in those who have been altogether devoid of acquaintance with anatomy.
Prichard's proposition, that language is more persistent than physical characters, is one which has never been proved, and indeed admits of no proof, seeing that the records of language do not extend so far as those of physical characters. But, until the superior tenacity of linguistic over physical peculiarities is shown, and until the abundant evidence which exists, that the language of a people may change without corresponding physical change in that people, is shown to be valueless, it is plain that the zoological court of appeal is the highest for the ethnologist, and that no evidence can be set against that derived from physical characters.
What, then, will a new survey of mankind from the Linnaean point of view teach us?
The great antipodal block of land we call Australia has, speaking roughly, the form of a vast quadrangle, 2,000 miles on the side, and extends from the hottest tropical, to the middle of the temperate, zone. Setting aside the foreign colonists introduced within the last century, it is inhabited by people no less remarkable for the uniformity, than for the singularity, of their physical characters and social state. For the most part of fair stature, erect and well built, except for an unusual slenderness of the lower limbs, the AUSTRALIANS have dark, usually chocolate-coloured skins; fine dark wavy hair; dark eyes, overhung by beetle brows; coarse, projecting jaws; broad and dilated, but not especially flattened, noses; and lips which, though prominent, are eminently flexible.
The skulls of these people are always long and narrow, with a smaller development of the frontal sinuses than usually corresponds with such largely developed brow ridges. An Australian skull of a round form, or one the transverse diameter of which exceeds eight-tenths of its length, has never been seen. These people, in a word, are eminently "dolichocephalic," or long-headed; but, with this one limitation, their crania present considerable variations, some being comparatively high and arched, while others are more remarkably depressed than almost any other human skulls.
The female pelvis differs comparatively little from the European; but in the pelves of male Australians which I have examined, the antero-posterior and transverse diameters approach equality more nearly than is the case in Europeans.
No Australian tribe has ever been known to cultivate the ground, to use metals, pottery, or any kind of textile fabric. They rarely construct huts. Their means of navigation are limited to rafts or canoes, made of sheets of bark. Clothing, except skin cloaks for protection from cold, is a superfluity with which they dispense; and though they have some singular weapons, almost peculiar to themselves, they are wholly unacquainted with bows and arrows.
It is but a step, as it were, across Bass's Straits to Tasmania. Neither climate nor the characteristic forms of vegetable or animal life change largely on the south side of the Straits, but the early voyagers found Man singularly different from him on the north side. The skin of the Tasmanian was dark, though he lived between parallels of latitude corresponding with those of middle Europe in our own hemisphere; his jaws projected, his head was long and narrow; his civilization was about on a footing with that of the Australian, if not lower, for I cannot discover that the Tasmanian understood the use of the throwing-stick. But he differed from the Australian in his woolly, negro-like hair, whence the name of NEGRITO, which has been applied to him and his congeners.
Such Negritos—differing more or less from the Tasmanian, but agreeing with him in dark skin and woolly hair—occupy New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Louisiade Archipelago; and stretching to the Papuan Islands, and for a doubtful extent beyond them to the north and west, form a sort of belt, or zone, of Negrito population, interposed between the Australians on the west and the inhabitants of the great majority of the Pacific islands on the east.
The cranial characters of the Negritos vary considerably more than those of their skin and hair, the most notable circumstance being the strong Australian aspect which distinguishes many Negrito skulls, while others tend rather towards forms common in the Polynesian islands.
In civilization, New Caledonia exhibits an advance upon Tasmania, and, farther north, there is a still greater improvement. But the bows and arrows, the perched houses, the outrigger canoes, the habits of betel-chewing and of kawa-drinking, which abound more or less among the northern Negritos, are probably to be regarded not as the products of an indigenous civilization, but merely as indications of the extent to which foreign influences have modified the primitive social state of these people.
From Tasmania or New Caledonia, to New Zealand or Tongataboo, is again but a brief voyage; but it brings about a still more notable change in the aspect of the indigenous population than that effected by the passage of Bass's Straits. Instead of being chocolate-coloured people, the Maories and Tongans are light brown; instead of woolly, they have straight, or wavy, black hair. And if from New Zealand, we travel some 5,000 miles east to Easter Island; and from Easter Island, for as great a distance north-west, to the Sandwich Islands; and thence 7,000 miles, westward and southward, to Sumatra; and even across the Indian Ocean, into the interior of Madagascar, we shall everywhere meet with people whose hair is straight or wavy, and whose skins exhibit various shades of brown. These are the Polynesians, Micronesians, Indonesians, whom Latham has grouped together under the common title of AMPHINESIANS.
The cranial characters of these people, as of the Negritos, are less constant than those of their skin and hair. The Maori has a long skull; the Sandwich Islander a broad skull. Some, like these, have strong brow ridges; others, like the Dayaks and many Polynesians, have hardly any nasal indentation.
It is only in the westernmost parts of their area that the Amphinesian nations know anything about bows and arrows as weapons, or are acquainted with the use of metals or with pottery. Everywhere they cultivate the ground, construct houses, and skilfully build and manage outrigger, or double, canoes; while, almost everywhere, they use some kind of fabric for clothing.
Between Easter Island, or the Sandwich Islands, and any part of the American coast is a much wider interval than that between Tasmania and New Zealand, but the ethnological interval between the American and the Polynesian is less than that between either of the previously named stocks.
The typical AMERICAN has straight black hair and dark eyes, his skin exhibiting various shades of reddish or yellowish brown, sometimes inclining to olive. The face is broad and scantily bearded; the skull wide and high. Such people extend from Patagonia to Mexico, and much farther north along the west coast. In the main a race of hunters, they had nevertheless, at the time of the discovery of the Americas, attained a remarkable degree of civilization in some localities. They had domesticated ruminants, and not only practised agriculture, but had learned the value of irrigation. They manufactured textile fabrics, were masters of the potter's art, and knew how to erect massive buildings of stone. They understood the working of the precious, though not of the useful, metals; and had even attained to a rude kind of hieroglyphic, or picture, writing.
The Americans not only employ the bow and arrow, but, like some Amphinesians, the blow-pipe, as offensive weapons: but I am not aware that the outrigger canoe has ever been observed among them.
I have reason to suspect that some of the Fuegian tribes differ cranially from the typical Americans; and the Northern and Eastern American tribes have longer skulls than their Southern compatriots. But the ESQUIMAUX, who roam on the desolate and ice-bound coasts of Arctic America, certainly present us with a new stock. The Esquimaux (among whom the Greenlanders are included), in fact, though they share the straight black hair of the proper Americans, are a duller complexioned, shorter, and more squat people, and they have still more prominent cheek-bones. But the circumstance which most completely separates them from the typical Americans, is the form of their skulls, which instead of being broad, high, and truncated behind, are eminently long, usually low, and prolonged backwards.
These Hyperborean people clothe themselves in skins, know nothing of pottery, and hardly anything of metals. Dependent for existence upon the produce of the chase, the seal and the whale are to them what the cocoa-nut tree and the plantain are to the savages of more genial climates. Not only are those animals meat and raiment, but they are canoes, sledges, weapons, tools, windows, and fire; while they support the dog, who is the indispensable ally and beast of burden of the Esquimaux.
It is admitted that the Tchuktchi, on the eastern side of Behring's Straits, are, in all essential respects, Esquimaux; and I do not know that there is any satisfactory evidence to show that the Tunguses and Samoiedes do not essentially share the physical characters of the same people. Southward, there are indications of Esquimaux characters among the Japanese, and it is possible that their influence may be traced yet further.
However this may be, Eastern Asia, from Mantchouria to Siam, Thibet, and Northern Hindostan, is continuously inhabited by men, usually of short stature, with skins varying in colour from yellow to olive; with broad cheek-bones and faces that, owing to the insignificance of the nose, are exceedingly flat; and with small, obliquely-set, black eyes and straight black hair, which sometimes attains a very great length upon the scalp, but is always scanty upon the face and body. The skull is never much elongated, and is, generally, remarkably broad and rounded, with hardly any nasal depression, and but slight, if any, projection of the jaws.
Many of these people, for whom the old name of MONGOLIANS may be retained, are nomades; others, as the Chinese, have attained a remarkable and apparently indigenous civilization, only surpassed by that of Europe.
At the north-western extremity of Europe the Lapps repeat the characters of the Eastern Asiatics. Between these extreme points, the Mongolian stock is not continuous, but is represented by a chain of more or less isolated tribes, who pass under the name of Calmucks and Tartars, and form Mongolian islands, as it were, in the midst of an ocean of other people.