The word Adam is first written as a proper name in Genesis ii, 19, but the word written Adam is and this is found in Genesis i, 26, and in several other verses. In i, 27, the word is used as if it meant not one man only, but “male and female;” indeed v. 2, says, “male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam.” Genesis ii, 18, treats the man as alone, and 19 his name as Adam. What is the value of this Book of Genesis, the sole authority for the hypothesis that Adam and Eve, about 6,000 years ago, were the sole founders of the peoples now living on the face of the earth? Written we know not by whom, we know not when, and we know not in what language. Eusebius, Chrysostom, and Clemens Alexandrinus alike agree that the name of Moses should not stand at the head of Genesis as the author of the book. Origen did not hesitate to declare the contents of the first and second chapters of Genesis to be purely figurative. Our translation of it has been severely criticised by the learned and pious Bellamy, and by the more learned and less pious Sir William Drummond. It has been amended and revised in our own day. Errors almost innumerable have been pointed out, the correctness of the Hebrew text itself questioned, and yet this book is claimed as an unerring guide to the students of ethnology. They may do anything, everything, except stray out of the beaten track. We have, on the one hand, an anonymous book, which, for the development of the diversities of the human family, does not even take us back so much as 6,000 years. At least 1,600 years must be deducted for the alleged Noachian deluge, when the world’s inhabitants were again reduced to one family, one race, one type. On the other hand, we have now existing Esquimaux men, of the Arctic realm—Chinamen, of the Asiatic realm—Englishmen, of the European realm—Sahara negroes, of the African realm—Fuegians, of the American realm—New Zealanders, of the Polynesian realm—the Malay, representative of the realm which bears his name—the Tasmanian, of the Australian realm—with other families of each realm, too numerous for mention here; dark and fair; black-skinned and ’white-skinned; woolly-haired and straight-haired; low forehead, high forehead; Hottentot limb, Negro limb, Caucasian limb. Do all these different and differing structures and colors trace their origin to one pair? To Adam and Eve, or rather to Noah and his family? Or are they (the various races) indigenous to their native soils, and climates? And are these various types naturally resultant, with all their differences, from the differing conditions for life persistent to and consistent with them? The question is really this—Have the different races of man all found their common parent in Noah, about 4,300 years ago? Assuming the unity of the races or species of men now existing, there are but three suppositions on which the diversity now seen can be accounted for:—