It is obvious to the most superficial observer that there are divisions or varieties in the Human Family, commonly called Races; but the most careful explorations of Science leave the number uncertain. These differences are in Color and in Skull,--also in Language. Of these the most obvious is Color; but here, again, the varieties multiply in proportion as we consider transitional or intermediate hues. Two great teachers in the last century--Linnæus, of whom it was said, “God created, Linnæus classified,” _Deus creavit, Linnæus disposuit_,[127] and Kant, a sincere and penetrating seeker of truth--were content with four,--white, copper, tawny or olive, and black,--corresponding geographically to European, American, Asiatic, and African. Buffon, in his eloquent portraiture, recognizes five, with geographical designations. He was followed by Blumenbach, who also recognizes five, with the names which have become so famous since,--Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Here first appears the popular, but deceptive term, Caucasian; for nobody supposes now that the white cradle was on Caucasus, which is best known to English-speaking people by the verse of Shakespeare, making it anything but Eden,-- “Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”[128] Blumenbach was an able and honest inquirer; and if his nomenclature is defective, it is only another illustration of the adage, that nothing is at the same time invented and perfected. If I mention other attempts, it is only to show how Science hesitates before this great problem. Cuvier reduces the Family to three, with branches or subdivisions, and lends his great authority to the term Caucasian, which he adopts from Blumenbach. Lesson began with three, according to color,--white, yellow, and black; but afterwards recognized six,--white, bistre, orange, yellow, red, black,--represented respectively by European, Hindoo, Malay, Mongolian, American, and Negro, African and Asiatic. Desmoulins makes eleven. Bory de Saint-Vincent adds to Desmoulins. Broc adds to Saint-Vincent. The London “Ethnological Journal” makes no less than sixty-three, of which twenty-eight varieties are intellectual and thirty-five physical; and we are told[129] that thirty varieties of Caucasian alone are recognized on the monuments of ancient Egypt, as they appear in the magnificent works of Rosellini and Lepsius. Our own countryman, Pickering,--whose experience was gained on the Exploring Expedition of Captain Wilkes,--in his work on “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution,” enumerates eleven varieties of Man, divided into four groups, according to color,--white, brown, blackish-brown, and black. In his opinion, “there is no middle ground between the admission of eleven distinct species in the Human Family and the reduction to one.”[130]