When examined under the microscope, the cutaneous pigment which gives the human body its characteristic colour, doubtless shows different tints, but yellow is always present as a colouring element. If we apply to man the laws which Isidore Geoffroy has deduced from his observations upon animals, we are led to conclude that this colour originally predominated. When the White is crossed with the Negro, the yellow colouring element at once asserts itself and generally appears to predominate. In the colonies the general term of _yellows_ is sometimes given to mulattos. This result is again explained by the experiments of Darwin; and the conclusion is admissible that the original colour of man more or less approximated to this tint. Certain facts which have been observed among Negroes seem also to confirm this conclusion. Among the most strongly characterised peoples belonging to this type, the appearance has been noticed of individuals of a lighter colour, sometimes almost resembling the Whites in this respect, sometimes tending more or less to yellow, without presenting any of the phenomena of teratological albinism. These individual peculiarities of colour may be attributed to atavism. Now among no white or yellow race have facts been noticed which can be regarded as reciprocal to the preceding. Nothing therefore authorises us to regard the Negro race as having preceded the other two; and, on the contrary, the contrast which I have just pointed out leads to the conclusion that the ancestors of the negro were a race of a much lighter colour. On the other hand, we know that the Aryan race is the latest. The question of priority thus lies between the Semitic, the Allophylian, and the group of yellow races. What I have said above of the fundamental colour being present as an element in the colour of all races, and the phenomena of crossing, point with some probability in favour of the latter. Philology seems to confirm this view. Monosyllabic languages, which imply the first attempts at human speech, only exist among the yellow races. All the Negro races and the Allophylian Whites speak agglutinative languages, which answer to the second form which man gave to the expression of his thoughts. Aryans and Semites both have inflectional languages. Philology then seems to lead to the same conclusion as physiology, and even to give an appearance of greater probability to these conjectures, which I only give for what they are worth.