Precisely parallel varieties are ascertained to arise in the same race of animals. Those of the domestic kind “vary from each other in size much more than individuals the most different in stature among mankind.” The small Welsh cattle compared with the large flocks of the southern counties in England; or the Shetland ponies with the tall-backed mares of Flanders; the bantam breed with the large English fowls, are well known examples. More striking instances are mentioned by naturalists. In the isles of the Celebes, a race of buffaloes is said to exist, which is of the size of a common sheep; and Pennant has described a variety of the horse in Ceylon, not more than thirty inches in height. The swine of Cuba, imported into that island from Europe, have become double the height and magnitude of the stock from which they were derived. The disproportionate arm of the Negro and leg of the Hindoo meet an exact parallel in the swine of Normandy, the hind-quarters of which are so out of keeping with the fore, that the back forms an inclined plane to the head; and as the head itself partakes of the same direction, the snout is but a little removed from the ground. Among domesticated animals, no species afford more striking specimens of modification in structure than the hog tribe. The external forms which the race has assumed surpass in monstrosity the most extraordinary diversities of the human frame. “Swine,” observes Blumenbach, “in some countries have degenerated into races which, in singularity, far exceed every thing that has been found strange in bodily variety among the human race. Swine with solid hoofs were known to the ancients, and large breeds of them are found in Hungary and Sweden. In like manner the European swine first carried by the Spaniards in 1509 to the island of Cuba—at that time celebrated for its pearl-fishery—degenerated into a monstrous race, with toes that were half a span in length.” The texture of the skin of several species of animals is different in a wild and in a domesticated condition; and the character of the hair exhibits analogous variations to that of the tribes of mankind. In the instance of a neglected flock of sheep, the fine wool is soon succeeded by a coarser kind, and the breed approximates to the argali, or wild sheep of Siberia, the original stock, which are covered with hair. The covering of the goat and dog displays the same variety. Thus, the several external distinctions from each other which the nations of men develop, must be admitted to be plainly compatible with their forming a single species, when distinctions of a parallel nature, but more numerous and singular, have arisen within the limits of a species in the inferior animal creation. It may be difficult, nay impossible, to explain the phenomena of external variation—but surely it would be a matter of surprise if it did not exist, considering the variation of external circumstances—artic cold and tropical heat—flowery savannas and arid deserts—civilization and barbarism—liberty and oppression—scantiness of food and an abundant supply—nutritious food and a feebly supporting fare—the feeling of security and the sense of danger.

If the existence of varieties of structure and complexion offers no argument against the common nature and origin of the millions of mankind in the slightest degree valid, their identity as a species is strongly supported by adverting to the general laws of their animal economy. These have reference to the manner of their birth, the period of gestation, the duration of life, and the casualties in the form of diseases to which they are subject; and, in all these respects, a general coincidence proclaims the unity of the human population of the globe. As to longevity, it is the case indeed that the barbarian tribes are shorter-lived than the cultivated races; but this is owing to the physical hardships under which they suffer, and to ignorance of the appropriate remedies to use under the assailments of sickness, freedom from the former and a knowledge of the latter being possessed by all civilized nations. Facts prove that, in circumstances favorable to extreme longevity, the Europeans, the most polished communities, have no preëminence over the tribes of Africa, among the least advanced in the social scale. Mr. Easton, of Salisbury, gives the following instances of advanced age from the Europeans and Asiatics—

In A. D. Aged.
Appollonius at Tyana99 130
St. Patrick491 122
Attila500 124
Leywarch Hêw500 150
St. Coemgene618 120
Piastus, King of Poland861 120
Thomas Parr1635 152
Henry Jenkins1670 169
Countess of Desmond1612 145
Thomas Damme1648 154
Peter Torton1724 185
Margaret Patters1739 137
John Rovin and Wife1741 172 & 164
St. Mougah or Kentigern1781 185

In juxtaposition with this list, we may place the following observation of Humbolt relating to the native Americans: “It is by no means uncommon,” he remarks, “to see at Mexico, in the temperate zone, half-way up the Cordillera, natives—and especially women—reach a hundred years of age. This old age is generally comfortable; for the Mexicans and Peruvian Indians preserve their strength to the last. While I was at Lima, the Indian, Hilario Sari, died at the village of Chiguata, four leagues distant from the town of Arequipa, at the age of one hundred and forty-three. She had been united in marriage for ninety years to an Indian of the name of Andrea Alea Zar, who attained the age of one hundred and seventeen. This old Peruvian went, at the age of one hundred and thirty, a distance of from three to four leagues daily on foot.” Dr. Prichard, from various sources, collected a variety of remarkable instances of Negro longevity, of which the two following are samples—

December 5th, 1830—Died at St. Andrews, Jamaica, the property of Sir Edward Hyde East, Robert Lynch, a negro slave in comfortable circumstances, who perfectly recollected the great earthquake in 1692, and further recollected the person and equipages of the Lieutenant-governor Sir Henry Morgan, whose third and last governorship commenced in 1680; viz.—one hundred and fifty years before. Allowing for this early recollection the age of ten years, this negro must have died at the age of one hundred and sixty.

Died, February 17th, 1823, in the bay of St. John’s, Antigua, a black woman named Statira. She was a slave, and was hired as a day-laborer during the building of the gaol, and was present at the laying of the corner-stone, which ceremony took place one hundred and sixteen years ago. She also stated that she was a young woman grown, when the President Sharp assumed the administration of the island, which was in 1706. Allowing her to be fourteen years old at that time, we must conclude her age to be upward of one hundred and thirty years.

The same authority received from a physician at St. Vincent’s as an answer to his query this statement—

“I have known a great many very old Negroes, whose exact ages could not be ascertained. At the time of the hurricane in 1831, I had a record of the mortality in the whole of my practice from the year 1813, and in every year there were deaths of Negroes computed to be sixty, seventy, or eighty years of age, and upward. My father will be eighty-four years old in May next, and the Negro woman who carried him about as a child is still living, and at the age of ninety-six enjoying good health, upright in figure, and capable of walking several miles.” It may be true that the Negroes regarded in mass exhibit a shorter term of life than the European average; but this is sufficiently explained by the privations of their lot in the colonies to which they have been transported, and by an unfavorable climatic influence and geographical site in their native country. The preceding facts show, that there is no law forbidding the Negro to attain a longevity equal to that of the European, in circumstances friendly to it; while placing the European in subjection to the same amount of toil in the West Indies, or planting him amid the swamps, the luxuriant vegetation, the inundations, and heat of Western Africa, and his term of life in general would not come up to the Negro standard. It appears from the researches of Major Tulloch, as embodied in statistical reports printed by the House of Commons, that neither the Saxon, nor Celtic, nor mixed race, composing the troops of Great Britain, can withstand—even under the most favorable circumstances—the deleterious influence of a tropical climate. It is shown, also, that this result is not to be attributed to intemperance, the besetting vice of all soldiers; for though temperance diminishes the effects of climate, and adds to the chances of the European, it is by no means a permanent security. So far as regards the vast regions of the earth, the most fertile, the richest, the question as to their permanent occupancy by the Saxon and Celt—as Britain, or France, or any other country, is now occupied by its native inhabitants—appears, from these reports, to be answered in the negative. “The Anglo-Saxon is now pushing himself toward the tropical countries; but can the Saxon maintain himself in these countries? It is to be feared not. Experience seems to indicate that neither the Saxon nor Celtic races can maintain themselves, in the strict sense of the word, within tropical countries. To enable them to do so, they require a slave population of native laborers, or of colored men at least. The instances of Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia, where the Spanish and Portuguese seem to be able to maintain their ground, do not bear so directly on the question as many may suppose; for, in the first place, we know not precisely the extent to which these have mingled with the dark and native races; and secondly, the emigrants from Spain and Portugal partook, in all probability, more of the Moor, Pelasgic, and even Arab blood, than of the Celt or Saxon.”

A careful comparison of different tribes leads to the conclusion, that the general phenomena of human life, or those processes which are termed the natural functions, the laws of the animal economy, are remarkably uniform, making allowance for the influence of climates, of modes of living, of localities, and of the accidents which interrupt the natural course. The age of puberty announces itself by corresponding symptoms, and that of advanced life by analogous signs of decrepitude, the decrease of the humors, the loss or decay of sight, and of the other senses, and a change in the color of the hair. All communities of men appear open to the attack of all kinds of disease, though a few haunt particular districts, and of course only prey upon those who are exposed to their invasion. In some cases, it is only the old inhabitants of these neighborhoods that are attacked, as in the instance of the plica polonica, which afflicts the Sarmatic race on and near the banks of the Vistula, from which the German residents are in a great measure free. But this proves no specific difference between the two, but only shows that, to acquire a predisposition to certain local complaints is a work of time, and will probably appear in new settlers after the lapse of centuries. There is a well-marked variety in the constitution of nations, and in their liability to certain given disorders; but the difference between the torpid American and the irritable European is not greater than the common varieties of constitution which meet us within the bounds of the same family, and which render its different members peculiarly subject to different complaints. The conclusion to which these considerations point—that of the identity of mankind as a species—is strongly supported by the fecundity of the offspring of parents of different races. Hunter and other naturalists have advanced it as a law, that if the offspring of two individual animals belonging to different breeds is found to be capable of procreation, the parent animals—though differing from each other in some particulars—are of the same species; and if the offspring so engendered is sterile, then the races from which it descended are originally distinct. This is a position to which there are many exceptions; but it is undoubtedly true, that the energy of propagation is very defective in the product of a union of different species. Tried by this test, the inference is in favor of a common nature belonging to all mankind; for the mixture of originally far-separated human races has repeatedly resulted in a numerous population, physically equal, and in many instances superior, to either branch of the ancestral stock.