Owing to its comparatively recent origin

much diversity of opinion prevails regarding its proper scope and limits. But it may be said to embrace a comparative study of the various races of mankind, their origin, physfcal and mental differences, dispersion, geographical distribution and intertivglings. The fundamental human ibe generally recognized are the black, frizzly haired Ethiopic (negro); the yellow, lank-haired Mongolic; the white,: smooth-haired Caucasic; the coppery lank and long-haired American; and the brown straight-haired Malayo-Polynesian. The last is commonly rejected as evidently the outcome of a comparatively recent mixture in which the Mongolic elements predominate. Most authorities regard also the American as a remote branch of the same group; this view seems justified by the striking Mongolic features occurring in every part of the New World, as among the Utahs of the Western States and the Botocudos of Eastern Brazil. We are thus reduced to the three first-mentioned divisions, a grouping again adopted by Profe or Flower (1885), who concludes that primitive man has in the course of ages become differentiated into “the three extreme types represented by the Caucasian of Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that all existing members of the species can be ranged around these types, or somewhere or other between them.” Subjoined is a brief summary of the main divisions and subdivisions of these three fundamental groups I. The Ethiopic group falls naturally into a Western or African and an Eastern or Oceanic division. The Western occupies all Africa from the Sahara S. and comprises a N. or Sudanese branch (African Negroes proper), and a S. or Bantu branch (more or le mixed Negro and Negroid populations). The Oceanie division of the Ethiopic group comprises four branches: (1) the Papuans of the Eastern Archipelago and New Guinea; (2) the closely allied Me lanes i ans of the Solomon, New He brides, New Caledonia, Loyalty, and Fiji Archipelagos; (3) the now extinct Tasmanians, and (4) the Austral i ans, the most divergent 6f all Negro or Negroid peas Il. The Mongolie group occupies the greater part of the Eastern hemisphere and till the discovery of America. was in exclusive po e ion of the New World. Its chief branches are (1) the Mongolo-Tartars of Central and North Asia, Asia Minor, parts of Ru ia and the Balkan Peninsula; (2) the Tibeto-Indo-Chinese of ‘Tibet, China proper, Sepen and Indo- China: 3) the Finno-Ugrians of Finland, Lapland, Esthonia, Middle Volga, Ural Mountains, North Siberia, Hungary; (4) the Malayo-Polynesians of the Malay Peninsula, the greater and le er Sunda Islands Madagascar, the Philippines, For mos a, and Kastern Polynesia; (5) th American Indians, comprising all th aborigines of the New World, excep the Eskimo, who with the Ainos o Ye o, form aberrant members of thi Mongolie group.