1. The populations of South-eastern Asia, Mongol in physiognomy and monosyllabic in speech, have always been considered to form a large and natural, though not always a primary, group. Two-thirds of its area, and the whole of its frontier north of the Himalayas, is formed by the Chinese and Tibetans alone. These differ considerably from each other, but more from the Turks, Mongols, and Tongusians around. In the mountainous parts of the Assam frontier and the Burmese empire, each valley has its separate dialect. Yet these graduate into each other.
2. Central Asia and Siberia are occupied by four great groups, the populations allied to the Turk, the populations allied to the Mongol, the populations allied to the Mantshu, and the populations allied to the Finns. These are pretty definitely distinguished from each other, as well as from the Chinese and Tibetans. They cover a vast area, an area, which, either from history or inference, we are certain is far wider at present than it was originally. They have encroached on each and all of the populations around, till they meet with families equally encroaching in the direction of China and Tibet. This it is that makes the families which are called Turanian and Monosyllabic natural groups. They are cut off, more or less, from each other and from other populations by the displacement of groups originally more or less transitional. The typical populations of the centre spread themselves at the expense of the sub-typicals of the periphery until the extremes meet.
3. The circumpolar populations supply similar illustrations. Beginning with Scandinavia, the Lap stands in remarkable contrast with the Norwegian of Norway, and the Swede of Sweden. Why is this? Because the Northman represents a population originally German,—a population which, however much it may have graduated into the type of the most southern congeners of the Lap, is now brought into contact with a very different member of that stock.
4. This phænomenon repeats itself in the arctic portions of America, where the Algonkin and Loucheux Indians (Indians of the true American type) come in geographical contact, and in physiological contrast, with the Eskimo. Consequently along the Loucheux and Algonkin frontiers the line of demarcation between the Eskimo and the Red Indian (currently so-called) is abrupt and trenchant. Elsewhere, as along the coast of the Pacific, the two classes of population graduate into each other.
5. The African family is eminently isolated. It is, however, just along the point of contact between Africa and Asia that the displacements have been at a maximum. The three vast families of the Berbers, the Arabs and the Persians, cannot but have obliterated something (perhaps much) in the way of transition.
6. The Bushmen and Hottentots are other instances of extreme contrast, i. e. when compared with the Amakosah Caffres. Yet the contrast is only at its height in those parts where the proof of Caffre encroachment is clearest. In the parts east of Wallfisch Bay—traversed by Mr. Galton—the lines of difference are much less striking.
Such are some of the instances that illustrate what may be called the "subjectivity of ethnological groups,"—a term which greatly helps to reconcile two apparently conflicting habits, viz. that of thinking with the advocates of the unity of the human species, and employing the nomenclature of their opponents.