THE
NATURAL HISTORY COURT.
PART I.
ETHNOLOGY.
Ethnology is compounded of two Greek words, the latter of which scarcely requires explanation, because it already forms part of a numerous class of compounds with which the learned reader is well acquainted. The general reader, too, is perhaps equally familiar with them. We have them in such words as Geo-logy. Astro-logy, Physio-logy, and a long list besides. The Greek form of these would be Geo-logia, Astro-logia, &c. The basis of the term is the substantive logos, meaning a word. In its modified form, however, and in its application as the element of a compound word, it means the principles, or science, of the department (whatever it may be) that is denoted by the root which precedes it. In the word before us it means the principles of that department of human knowledge which is denoted by the form Ethno.
Ethnology means the science, not exactly of the different nations of the world, but of the different varieties of the human species.
It is not thought necessary to enlarge upon this further, since, it is hoped, that the groups to which the visitor is directed will sufficiently tell their own tale. The extent to which they differ from each other is manifest. Still more do they differ from such groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and other Europeans as may collect around them.
As a general rule the varieties that are especially illustrated are foreign to Europe; it being supposed that the character of most European populations is sufficiently understood. Hence, the Ethnology is that of Asia, Africa, and the New World. Of these, the most remarkable varieties are found under the extremes of heat and cold; under the tropics, and within the arctic circle. The intermediate and more temperate parts of the different continents, though by no means deficient in interesting and important varieties, supply fewer.
Of the populations within the arctic circle, it is only those of America that are illustrated (viz., in the Greenland group). The character, however, of the tribes thus far north, is pretty similar in all three continents—in Asia and Europe for the new, in America for the old, world.