Buffon, in his chapter upon _man_, a work which we can always read again with admiration and advantage, contents himself with bringing forward the three fundamental types of the human species which have been known from the first under the names of the white, black, and yellow race. But these three types in themselves do not exemplify every human physiognomy. The ancient inhabitants of America, commonly known as the Red-Skins, are entirely overlooked in this classification, and the distinction between the Negro and the white man can not always be easily pointed out, for in Africa the Abyssinians, the Egyptians, and many others, in America the Californians, and in Asia the Hindoos, Malays, and Javanese are neither white nor black. [Illustration: American Reptiles 1 and 2, Water Snakes (_Masticophis_); 3, Horned Toad (_Phrynosoma_); 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, American Toads; 6, Kangaroo Lizard (_Crotaphytus_); 7, Gila Monster (_Heloderma_); 8, Chuckwalla; 9, Harlequin Snake (_Elaps_); 10, Rattlesnake (_Crotalus)_] Blumenbach, the most profound anthropologist of the last century, and author of the first actual treatise upon the natural history of man, distinguished in his Latin work, _De Homine_, five races of men, the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, and American. Another anthropologist, Prochaska, adopted the divisions pointed out by Blumenbach, but united under the name of the _white race_, Blumenbach’s Caucasian and Mongolian groups, and added the _Hindoo race_. The eloquent naturalist Lacépède, in his _Histoire naturelle de l’Homme_, added to the races admitted by Blumenbach the _hyperborean race_, comprising the inhabitants of the northern portion of the globe in either continent. Cuvier fell back upon Buffon’s division, admitting only the white, black, and yellow races, from which he simply derived the _Malay_ and _American_ races. A naturalist of renown, Virey, author of _l’Histoire naturelle du Genre humain_, _l’Histoire naturelle de la Femme_, and of many other clever productions upon natural history and particularly anthropology, gave much attention to the classification of the human races. But he was not favorable to the unity of our species, being led to entertain the opinion that the human species was twofold. This was the starting point of an erroneous deviation in the ideas of naturalists who wrote after Virey. We find Bory de Saint Vincent admitting as many as fifteen species of men, and another naturalist, Desmoulins, doubtless influenced by a feeling of emulation, distinguished sixteen human species, which, moreover, were not the same as those admitted by Bory de Saint Vincent.