I. For each of the great sections of our species, the accumulation of facts, even in the eleventh hour, has out-run the anticipations of the most impatient; indeed so rapidly did it take place during the latter part of Dr. Prichard's own lifetime, that the learning which he displays in his latest edition, is, in its way, as admirable as the bold originality exhibited in the first sketch of his system, published as early as 1821; rather in the shape of a university thesis than of a full and complete production. Thus-- For Asia, there are the contributions of Rosen to the philology of Caucasus; without which (especially the grammatical sketch of the Circassian dialects) the present writer would have considered his evidence as disproportionate to his theory. Then, although matters of Archæology rather than of proper Ethnography, come in brilliant succession, the labours of Botta, Layard, and Rawlinson, on Assyrian antiquity, to which may be added the bold yet cautious criticism and varied observations of Hodgson, illustrating the obscure Ethnology of the Sub-Himalayan Indians, and preeminently confirmatory of the views of General Briggs and others as to the real affinities of the mysterious hill-tribes of Hindostan. Add to these much new matter in respect to the Indo-Chinese frontiers of China, Siam, and the Burmese Empire; and add to this the result of the labours of Fellowes, Sharpe, and Forbes, upon the monuments and language of Asia Minor. I do not say that any notable proportion of these latter investigations have been incorporated in the present work; their proper place being in a larger and more discursive work. Nevertheless, they have helped to determine those results to the general truth of which the present writer commits himself. Africa has had a bright light thrown over more than one of its darkest portions by Krapff for the eastern coast, by Dr. Beke for Abyssinia, by the Tutsheks for the Gallas and Tumalis, by the publications of the Ethnological Society of Paris, and the researches of the American and English Missionaries for many other of its ill-understood and diversified populations, especially those to the south and west. The copious extract from Mr. Jukes's Voyage of the _Fly_, show at once how much has been added; yet, at the same time, how much remains to be learned in respect to our knowledge of New Guinea; whilst the energy of the Rajah Brooke has converted Borneo, from a _terra incognita_, into one of the clear points of the ethnological world. In _South_ America, although many of the details of Sir Robert Schomburgk were laid before the world previous to the publication of the fifth volume of the Physical History, many of them, though now published, were at that time still in manuscript.