they may extend, are to be attributed, not always to the precise mean temperature of the place, but frequently to the equable temperature throughout the year. Some plants, as the vine and the wheat, will bear considerable degrees of cold if the summers be hot enough to ripen them. Others, as the palms and tree ferns, are permanently cut off by a single night of severe weather. Thus, owing to the small variation of its temperature throughout the year, the extreme south point of Patagonia possesses plants, congeners of which belong to a latitude much nearer the equator.

It remains only to mention briefly the distribution of the various races of mankind. Though sprung from a common origin, long residence in particular climates under particular circumstances have given distinctive characters to our race. In colour, they vary from the fair complexion and light eyes of Northern Europeans, to the yellow-coloured tribes of China, the Red American Indian, the olive Malay, and the black African. The hair also differs remarkably, being in some races soft and flowing, in others crisp, resembling wool, in others scanty and wiry. The form of the skull and of the limbs is also liable to considerable variation; the head of some races being oval, of others pyramidal, and of others flat with a receding forehead. The best ethnologists reckon five principal varieties.

1. The Caucasian race comprises nearly all Europe and the north of Africa, together with all Asia, from the Ganges to the Mediterranean, as far north as a line drawn from the Himalaya Mountains to the Oxus and the Ural. They have also displaced the original races in Canada and the United States, and on the coasts of Australia and South Africa, and have become largely intermixed with them throughout Mexico and the greater part of South America. They have always comprised the nations most advanced in civilisation, and have included Jews, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and the nations of Modern Europe. The

characteristics of the Caucasian race are an oval head, high forehead, small mouth, and generally flowing hair. In colour they differ very widely, from the fairest complexion to swarthy, and even quite black. And it is observable that amongst the Jews, a single tribe of this great family, and that the one least altered by intermarriages with other people, and the one whose history can be best traced, the varieties of colour are every shade, from the lightest to the darkest. So that the colour of the skin may be entirely rejected from the consideration of race, and may be attributed wholly to climate and external circumstances.

of

2. The Mongolian or Chinese race occupies the remainder of Asia, with the exception of the Malay peninsula and the adjacent districts. The Finns and Lapps of the extreme north of Europe, and probably the Basques of Spain, and the Esquimaux of North America and Greenland, belong also to this family. The characteristics of the Mongolian are eyes obliquely set and small, head pyramidal above the cheek bones, which are wide, and render the face larger in proportion to the head, than it is in Europeans. The colour is commonly a yellow olive, more or less dark, and the hair scanty but wiry, though in some Mongolian tribes it is abundant.

3. The American race, or Red Indians, are not at all uniformly of that dull red colour which is peculiar to many of their tribes. Some are dark nearly to blackness, and some so fair as to vie with Europeans. The eyes are deeply set, and the beard commonly nearly wanting. They occupy the whole continent of America with the exception of the extreme north, but a mixed race has arisen in Peru, Brazil, and Mexico, from the infusion of Spanish and Portuguese settlements; and British colonization has nearly effaced the last traces of aboriginal American blood in the United States and Canada.

4. The whole of Africa below the Sahara and Abyssinia is occupied by the negro race, unless we except the European

settlements about the Cape of Good Hope, which are gradually driving the Hottentots and Bushman tribes northward. The latter vary in some respects from the negro races, but have been included under the same family. The Aborigines of Australia have been considered also to belong to the negro race rather than to the Malays. The distinctive characteristics are, a low forehead, protruding lips, and crisp hair, but these features are by no means constant, and vary greatly in different tribes.

5. The Malay race extends over the Malay peninsula, and the adjacent islands, Madagascar, and a great part of the Pacific. Their characteristics are, the head narrow, but less so than in the negro, the hair black, flowing, and abundant.

In mentioning these varieties of the human family, it is not to be understood that the type is so strongly defined as to admit of no gradations, much less that there is any distinction so permanont as not to admit of modification, by differing circumstances. Indeed, the varieties are considerably less than those between domesticated animals, which are known to have been derived from a common stock. The contrast presented by the small, black Welsh cattle and the oxen of Hereford, or of the Roman states, or by the Shetland pony and the London dray-horse, or Arabian courser, is far greater than that between the most distinct families of mankind. Indeed, the deepest researches of science have gone here, as in other instances, not to disparage, but to support the authority of the sacred record, and tend to show that God hath made "of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”

CHAPTER III.

M.G. Plates I. to XVIII.

THE Map of the World (Pl. I.) is divided into two Hemispheres. The right, or Eastern Hemisphere, contains the three Continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, commonly called the Old World, as having been known to the ancients. The left, or Western Hemisphere, contains the two Continents of North and South America, called the New World, having been only discovered by Columbus, in the year 1492.

Europe, Asia, Africa, and the two Americas, are commonly, but absurdly enough, called the Four Quarters* of the world, bearing, as we shall see hereafter, a very great relative disproportion to each other.

Recent geographers therefore have been led to divide the World into six, or rather seven portions: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the two Americas, Australasia, containing New Holland and the adjacent Islands, and Polynesia (from πoλùs and moos), comprising the numerous Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

* If the word Quarter be taken in its proper sense for an equal fourth part, the term is absurd when applied to the divisions of the globe; but not if we use it in the sense of division, or region. Thus we speak of the quarters of an orange, of quartering ground, &c.; and we say, In these quarters, for In these regions, or In this part of the world. Still the division of the world into four quarters is inconvenient, as it leaves us at a loss to which we must assign New Holland and the Islands in the South Seas.

EUROPE.

Or the four generally received divisions of the World, Europe (Pl. III.) is the smallest, comprising in its average length from east to west about 2500, and in breadth from north to south about 2000 British miles. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic or Frozen Sea, on the west by the Atlantic: an imaginary line, drawn through the Mediterranean, separates it from Africa, on the south; and it is divided from Asia, on the east, by another imaginary line, drawn through the Archipelago, the Sea of Marmora, and the Black Sea, and thence along the ridge of Caucasus to the Caspian. It is then carried along the river Ural and the Uralian Mountains, and from thence continued till it reaches the Arctic Sea, under Nova Zembla; but the eastern boundary is not well defined.

*

The Island of Great Britain is in the West of Europe, comprising the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, and the Principality of Wales. West of Great Britain is Ireland.

Below Great Britain is France, and below France to the west is Spain, and still to the west of Spain is Portugal. Eastward of France is Switzerland. South of Switzerland is Italy; and to the north-east

*The map of Europe being on too small a scale to admit all the names, the learner is referred also to the map of each country, for such places as he cannot find in the map of Europe.

†The words above and below are used in their familiar sense, with reference to the appearance of the places in the maps; and not in their more scientific one, with respect to elevation, or distance from the coast.