Not only do we observe the peculiarities of physical conformation resisting the destructive or degenerating hand of time, but certain imperfections in their faculties have been equally permanent in certain tribes. It is a curious fact that the Mamelukes, who have resided in Egypt for upwards of five hundred and fifty years, have never perpetuated their subsisting issue. Volney observed, that there does not exist one single family of them in the second generation; all their children perishing in the first or second descent. The same observation applies to the Turks, who can only secure the continuance of their families by marrying native women, an union which the Mamelukes disdained. This singularity, remarked by Volney, has been since confirmed by late travellers.
It will be found that the progress of domestication, the natural result of civilized improvement, tends more materially to operate a wonderful change in the animal conformation, than any other supposed agency. The head of the domestic pig differs as much from that of the wild one as the Negro’s from the Caucasian’s. At Padua, it has been observed that fowls have a cranium perforated by numerous holes, and hollowed out like a shell. In some countries, nay districts, cattle and sheep have or have not horns; and in other instances sheep have so many of them as to have acquired the epithet of polycerateous. Wild animals continuing to inhabit the place that bore them, undergo little or no change, and their fossil remains and skeletons are similar to the present species; but nothing can form a stronger contrast to this specific uniformity than the numerous varieties to be found in those races that have been crossed in breed and domesticated by man. We could scarcely imagine that our sheep owe their origin to the mouflon or argali, (ovis ammon,) an animal large in size, fleet, and fierce. The sheep of Senegal and India are those that have undergone the least degradation; while those of Barbary, Egypt, Arabia, and Persia, have experienced greater degeneration. We daily see dogs degenerate before our eyes, and it has not yet been satisfactorily ascertained whether they arise from one or several species. Cuvier, in his diligent researches, has concluded that our oxen do not originate in the urus or bison of the ancients formerly found in various parts of Europe, and still met with in the forests of Lithuania, and on the Carpathian and Caucasian chains; but he is of opinion, from the examination of fossil remains, that, like the camel and the dromedary, the species has been destroyed by civilization: the causes of these changes do not appear to operate by altering the parents but disposing them to produce offsprings more or less dissimilar in colour, form, and disposition.
Dr. Prichard observes, that the negro slaves of the third and fourth generation differ materially from the natives of Africa.
In opposition to this doctrine, which admits this wonderful degeneration under the plastic influence of domestication, it has been shown that, as far as we know, the lapse of ages has not produced any change in the generality of animals. The zoological descriptions given by Aristotle twenty-two centuries ago apply distinctly to the same species of the present day, and every work of art in which these animals are represented corroborates the fact. Geoffroy de St. Hilaire brought numerous mummies of animals from the sepulchres of Egypt, and found no more difference between their skeletons and the osseous conformation of the present races, than in the relics of the human mummy and the bones of our contemporaries.
The following luminous conclusion of Lawrence illustrates the observation of the foregoing fact: “If new characters are produced in the domestic animals because they have been taken from their primitive condition, and exposed to the operation of many, to them, unnatural causes,—if the pig is remarkable among these for the number and degrees of his varieties, because it has been the most exposed to causes of degeneration,—we shall be at no loss to account for the diversities in man, who is, in the true, though not in the ordinary sense of the word, more of a domesticated animal than any other. We know the wild state of most of them, but we are ignorant of the natural wild condition to which man was destined. Probably there is no such state; because Nature having limited him in no respect,—having fitted him for every kind of life, every climate, and every variety of food,—has given him the whole earth for his abode, and both the organized kingdoms for his nourishment. Yet, in the wide range through which the scale of human cultivation extends, we may observe a contrast between the two extremities, analogous to that which is seen in the wild and tamed races of animals. The savage may be compared to the former, which range the earth uncontrolled by man; civilized people to the domesticated breeds of the same species, whose diversities of form and colour are endless.”
It is therefore obvious that the various causes which operate upon animals in producing these alterations from the primitive race, although the manner in which they act is unknown, are sufficiently evident to convince us, by analogy, that they may account for similar phenomena in the human race, without the gratuitous assumption of different original species, tending to invalidate the Mosaic account of the creation. Despite the witticisms of Voltaire and other philosophers on this subject, sound philosophy teaches us to assign the same causes to the same effects without calling in the adventitious aid of other possible influences; and no difficulties prevent us from recognising the unity of the human species, which are not applicable to all other animals.
ON THE INHUMATION OF THE DEAD IN CITIES.
From time immemorial, medical men have strongly pointed out to municipal authorities the dangers that arise from burying the dead within the precincts of cities or populous towns. Impressed with the same conviction, ancient legislators only allowed to the most illustrious citizens a sepulchre in the temple of the gods. Euclides was interred in the temple of Diana Euclis, as a reward for his pious journey to Delphi in search of the sacred fire; the Magnesians erected a monument to Themistocles in their forum; Euphron received the same honour in Corinth; and Medea buried her two sons, Mermerus and Pheres, under the protection of Juno Acræa’s altars, to guard their ashes from their persecutors. Lycurgus was perhaps the only Grecian legislator who recommended inhumation in temples and in cities, to accustom youth to the daily spectacle of death.
The primitive Grecians, it appears, buried their dead in or about their dwellings; and we find a law amongst the Thebans, ordaining that every person who built a house should provide a repository for the dead upon his premises. In latter days, both Grecians and Romans erected their tombs outside of their cities, and chiefly by the road-side. It appears also, that, among the Romans, the bodies of the lower orders were promiscuously cast into wells, called fruticuli. Horace seems to allude to this practice. Hoc miseræ plebi stabat commune sepulchrum. The funerals of the wealthy patricians appear to have been most sumptuous and costly, the pall formed of valuable materials and decorated with splendid ornaments. Thus Statius: