the numerous islands scattered throughout the whole of the South Sea, belong to this division. It is called Malay because most of the tribes speak the Malay language, which may be traced in the various ramifications of this race from Madagascar to Eagle Island.

This variety is regarded by Blumenbach as constituting an intermediate link between the

no well-marked common characters can be assigned to it, and there are included in it races of men very different in organisation and qualities. In that division of the abode of the race which may be called the Southern Asiatic or East India Islands, we find at least two very different organisationsnamely, one Negro-like black, with strong curly hair; another of brown or olive colour, with longer hair. The first, regarded as the aboriginal inhabitants, occupy some islands entirely,

but are found in all the larger ones, in the mountainous interior parts, whither they seem to have been driven by the encroachments of new settlers. They resemble the African Negro in their black, woolly hair, and general formation of the skull and features; they are distinguished, however, by their language, and by a copious,

SOMETHING ABOUT THE VARIOUS NATIONS

bushy beard. They are wild, barbarous, and unci second, or light-coloured race, have more oval counter hair, and finer forms altogether; they occupy the d larger islands, and some smaller ones entirely. show their Malay origin by their organisation, la

Ma

A race of very fine organisation and qualities occupies the remaining islands of the South Sea from New Zealand on the west to Easter Island. In colour and features many of them approach to the Caucasian variety, while they are surpassed by none in symmetry, size, and strength. These have made considerable advances in civil

ization, and readily learn the European arts. The fine forms, the uncommon symmetry, the great strength and activity of many tribes in the South Sea Islands have been noticed by all who have had intercourse with them. The people of the Marquesas excel in beauty and majesty of form, in regularity of features, and in colour, all the other South Sea Islanders.

My young friends, observing this great difference between different races of mankind, will of course be likely to inquire whence the difference. This is a question very easily proposed, but very difficult

to answer.

Did the Divine Creator of man make a common race from which all others descended? Or did he make a black pair and a white pair from which all the great varieties arose? Does heat of climate make white people black? Does difference of climate alter the shape of the head, the jaws, and the bones? What effect has food in causing an alteration? These and such questions are con

tinually arising in the mind. We know that light and air, food, climate, occupation, and situation, have all a great effect upon the human species; and, although there are many difficulties on these points, yet, upon the whole, every circumstance concurs in proving that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other; that, on the contrary, there is but one species, which, after multiplying and spreading over the whole surface of the earth, has undergone various changes by the influence of climate, food,

modes of living, epidemic diseases, and mixture of dissimilar individuals; that at first these changes were not so conspicuous, and produced only individual varieties; that these varieties became afterwards more specific, because they were rendered more general, more strongly marked, and more permanent, by the continued action of the same causes; that they are transmitted from generation to generation as deformity or disease pass from parents to children.

"In tracing the globe," says Smith, "from the pole to the equator, we observe a gradation in the complexion nearly in proportion to the latitude of the country. Immediately below the Arctic Circle, a high and sanguine colour prevails; from this you descend to the mixture of red and white; afterwards succeed the brown, the olive, the tawny, and at length the black as you proceed to the line." The same distance from the sun does not, however, in every region indicate the same temperature of climate. Some secondary causes must be taken into consideration as correcting and limiting its influence. The elevation of the land, its vicinity to the sea, the nature of the soil, the state of cultivation, the course of winds, and many other circumstances enter into this view. But it is a great fact that temperate countries are for the most part inhabited by a white race; and that by far the greater number of the dark and black races dwell under burning suns. Peter Parley has seen brick-makers at Drayton brick-fields, as dark as the darkest Moors from one summer's working in our English sunshine, which is by no means very bronzing; and when he was "up the Straits" and among the Algerines, he saw English people who had been made slaves, so dark as to vie in colour with the dark races. Therefore he still holds to the opinion, that God formed of one blood all the nations of the Earth, and that,