ed out; " and so it may be with the evil effects from spirituous liquors, as well as with the unconquerably strong taste for them shown by so many savages. It further appears, mysterious as is the fact, that the first meeting of distinct and separated people generates disease.33 Mr. Sproat, who in Vancouver Island closely attended to the subject of extinction, believes that changed habits of life, which always follow from the advent of Europeans, induces much ill-health. He lays, also, great stress on so trifling a cause as that the natives become "bewildered and dull by the new life around them; they lose the motives for exertion, and get no new ones in their place." 34

The grade of civilization seems a most important element in the success of nations which come in competition. A few centuries ago Europe feared the inroads of Eastern barbarians; now, any such fear would be ridiculous. It is a more curious fact that savages did not formerly waste away, as Mr. Bagehot has remarked, before the classical nations, as they now do before modern civilized nations; had they done so, the old moralists would have mused over the event; but there is no lament in any writer of that period over the perishing barbarians."

Although the gradual decrease and final extinction of the races of man is an obscure problem, we can see that it depends on many causes, differing in different places and at different times. It is the same difficult problem as that presented by the extinction of one of the higher ani

32 See remarks to this effect in Sir H. Holland's 'Medical Notes and Reflections,' 1839, p. 390.

33 I have collected ('Journal of Researches, Voyage of the "Beagle," p. 435) a good many cases bearing on this subject: see also Gerland, ibid. s. 8. Poeppig speaks of the "breath of civilization as poisonous to savages."

84 Sproat, 'Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,' 1868, p. 284.

33 Bagehot, “Physios and Politics," 'Fortnightly Review,' April 1, 1868, p. 453.

mals-of the fossil horse, for instance, which disappeared from South America, soon afterward to be replaced, within the same districts, by countless troops of the Spanish horse. The New-Zealander seems conscious of this parallelism, for he compares his future fate with that of the native rat almost exterminated by the European rat. The difficulty, though great to our imagination, and really great if we wish to ascertain the precise causes, ought not to be so to our reason, as long as we keep steadily in mind that the increase of each species and each race is constantly hindered by various checks; so that if any new check, or cause of destruction, even a slight one, be superadded, the race will surely decrease in number; and as it has everywhere been observed that savages are much opposed to any change of habits, by which means injurious checks could be counterbalanced, decreasing numbers will sooner or later lead to extinction; the end, in most cases, being promptly determined by the inroads of increasing and conquering tribes.

On the Formation of the Races of Man.-It may be premised that when we find the same race, though broken up into distinct tribes, ranging over a great area, as over America, we may attribute their general resemblance to descent from a common stock. In some cases the crossing of races already distinct has led to the formation of new races. The singular fact that Europeans and Hindoos, who belong to the same Aryan stock and speak a language fundamentally the same, differ widely in appearance, while Europeans differ but little from Jews, who belong to the Semitic stock and speak quite another language, has been accounted for by Broca" through the Aryan branches having been largely crossed during their

36" On Anthropology," translation, Anthropolog. Review,' Jan. 1868,

wide diffusion by various indigenous tribes. When two races in close contact cross, the first result is a heterogeneous mixture: thus Mr. Hunter, in describing the Santali or hill-tribes of India, says that hundreds of imperceptible gradations may be traced "from the black, squat tribes of the mountains to the tall olive-colored Bramin, with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, and high but narrow head;" so that it is necessary in courts of justice to ask the witnesses whether they are Santalis or Hindoos." Whether a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabitants of some of the Polynesian islands, formed by the crossing of two distinct races, with few or no pure members left, would ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evidence. But, as with our domesticated animals, a crossed breed can certainly, in the course of a few generations, be fixed and made uniform by careful selection, we may infer that the free and prolonged intercrossing during many generations of a heterogeneous mixture would supply the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to reversion, so that a crossed race would ultimately become homogeneous, though it might not partake in an equal degree of the characters of the two parent-races.

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Of all the differences between the races of man, the color of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked. Differences of this kind, it was formerly thought, could be accounted for by long exposure under different climates; but Pallas first showed that this view is not tenable, and he has been followed by almost all anthropologists." The view has been rejected chiefly be

37 The Annals of Rural Bengal,' 1868, p. 134.

38 The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. p. 95.

39 Pallas, 'Act. Acad. St. Petersburg,' 1780, part ii. p. 69. He was followed by Rudolphi, in his 'Beyträge zur Anthropologie,' 1812. An

cause the distribution of the variously-colored races, most of whom must have long inhabited their present homes, does not coincide with corresponding differences of climate. Weight must also be given to such cases as that of the Dutch families, who, as we hear on excellent authority," have not undergone the least change of color, after residing for three centuries in South Africa. The uniform appearance in various parts of the world of gypsies and Jews, though the uniformity of the latter has been somwhat exaggerated," is likewise an argument on the same side. A very damp or a very dry atmosphere has been supposed to be more influential in modifying the color of the skin than mere heat; but as D'Orbigny in South America, and Livingstone in Africa, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions with respect to dampness and dryness, any conclusion on this head must be considered as very doubtful.42

Various facts, which I have elsewhere given, prove that the color of the skin and hair is sometimes correlated in a surprising manner with a complete immunity from the action of certain vegetable poisons and from the attacks of certain parasites. Hence it occurred to me, that negroes and other dark races might have acquired their dark tints by the darker individuals escaping during a long series of generations from the deadly influence of the miasmas of their native countries.

43

I afterward found that the same idea had long ago occurred to Dr. Wells." That negroes, and even mulattoes, excellent summary of the evidence is given by Godron, 'De l'Espèce,' 1859, vol. ii. p. 246, etc.

40 Sir Andrew Smith, as quoted by Knox, 'Races of Man,' 1850, p. 473. 41 See De Quatrefages on this head, 'Revue des Cours Scientifiques,' Oct. 17, 1868, p. 731.

42 Livingstone's Travels and Researches in S. Africa,' 1857, p. 338, 329. D'Orbigny, as quoted by Godron, 'De l'Espèce,' vol. ii. p. 266. 43 See a paper read before the Royal Soc. in 1813, and published in

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46

are almost completely exempt from the yellow fever, which is so destructive in tropical America, has long been known." They likewise escape to a large extent the fatal intermittent fevers that prevail along, at least, 2,600 miles of the shores of Africa, and which annually cause one-fifth of the white settlers to die, and another fifth to return home invalided." This immunity in the negro seems to be partly inherent, depending on some unknown peculiarity of constitution, and partly the result of acclimatization. Pouchet states that the negro regiments, borrowed from the Viceroy of Egypt for the Mexican War, which had been recruited near the Soudan, escaped the yellow fever almost equally well with the negroes originally brought from various parts of Africa, and accustomed to the climate of the West Indies. That acclimatization plays a part is shown by the many cases in which negroes, after having resided for some time in a colder climate, have become to a certain extent liable to tropical fevers.* The nature of the climate under which the white races have long resided, likewise has some influence on them; for, during the fearful epidemic of yellow fever in Demerara during 1837, Dr. Blair found that the death-rate of the immigrants was proportional to the latitude of the country whence they had come. With the negro the immunity, as far as it is the result of acclimatization, implies

47

his Essays in 1818. I have given an account of Dr. Wells's views in the Historical Sketch (p. xvi.) to my 'Origin of Species.' Various cases of color correlated with constitutional peculiarities are given in my Variation of Animals under Domestication,' vol. ii. pp. 227, 335.

44 See, for instance, Nott and Gliddon, 'Types of Mankind,' p. 68. 45 Major Tulloch, in a paper read before the Statistical Society, April 20, 1840, and given in the 'Athenæum,' 1840, p. 353.

46 The Plurality of the Human Race' (translat.), 1864, p. 60.

47 Quatrefages, 'Unité de l'Espèce Humaine,' 1861, p. 205. Waitz, 'Introduct. to Anthropology,' translat. vol. i. 1863, p. 124. Livingstone gives analogous cases in his Travels.'