Researches into the physical history of mankind

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1841. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... within the limits of a particular stock or race. Permanent varieties are those which having once taken place, continue to be propagated in the breed in perpetuity. The fact of their origination must be known by observation or inference, since the proof of this fact being defective it is more philosophical to consider characters which are perpetually inherited as specific or original. The term permanent variety, would otherwise express the meaning which properly belongs to species. The properties of species are two, viz. original difference of characters and the perpetuity of their transmission, of which only the latter can belong to permanent varieties. The instances are so many in which it is doubtful whether a particular tribe is to be considered as a distinct species, or only as a variety of some other tribe, that it has been found by naturalists convenient to have a designation applicable in either case. Hence the late introduction of the term race in this indefinite sense. Races are properly successions of individuals propagated from any given stock; and the term should be used without any involved meaning that such a progeny or stock has always possessed a particular character. The real import of the term has often been overlooked, and the word race has been used as if it implied a distinction in the physical character of the whole series of individuals. By writers on anthropology, who adopt this term, it is often tacitly assumed that such distinctions were primordial, and that their successive transmission has been unbroken. If such were the fact, a race so characterized would be a species in the strict meaning of the word, and it ought to be so termed. Section II.--Observations on the means of determining as to Identity and Diversity of Species-...