Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/183

Rh , in consequence of the superior numbers of the native race, a position analogous to that which they hold in Mexico and Central and South America. Marriage with Indian women is inevitable, and families of a mixed race are growing up everywhere, sharing the ideas and habits of the European father, and destined to mingle with the civilized community on a footing of equality.

These facts show that man is everywhere the same, and that his passions and instincts are independent of the differences that distinguish the human groups. The reason of it, says M. de Quatrefages, is that these differences, however accentuated they may seem to us, are essentially morphological, but do not in any way touch the wholly physiological power of reproduction.

 

EFORE entering upon an account of the geographical work of the world during 1878 and 1879, I would call attention to the great increase during the last few years of geographical societies. Eight have been formed within the last two years alone, and there are now throughout the world fifty-one of these organizations; the last two being one in Algeria and one in Japan. Our own society is the fifth in the number of members, though, as respects its annual revenue and ability to aid in the work of geographical exploration, it is much below bodies in Europe inferior to it in point of numbers. The oldest is the French Geographical Society of Paris, established in 1821; the largest and the most influential are the Royal Geographical Society of London, which has 3,337 members, and an annual income of about $40,000, and the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, with an annual income of about $33,000, $12,000 of which is contributed by the Russian Government.

In the department of physical geography, much interesting work has been done. Sir Wyville Thomson, as the result of observations made by him, chiefly in the scientific voyage of the Challenger, finds that many of the physical conditions of the globe depend upon its division into two hemispheres, one embracing nearly the whole of the dry land, and the other almost all the water. He says that all the vast mass of water, often two thousand fathoms in thickness, lying below what he calls the neutral land, moves slowly northward, and that this motion is due to the trade-winds. It is now established, he states, that the average depth of the ocean is about two thousand fathoms, and that 