I.] GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 13 



physical and climatic conditions. Wherever different climatic 

 zones have been invaded, the intruders have failed to secure 

 a permanent footing, either perishing outright, or disappearing by 

 absorption or more or less complete assimilation to the aboriginal 

 elements. Such are some "black Arabs" in Egyptian Sudan, 

 other Semites and Hamites in Abyssinia and West Sudan (Himya- 

 rites, Fulahs and others), Finns and Turks in Hungary and the 

 Balkan Peninsula (Magyars, Bulgars, Osmanli), Portuguese and 

 Netherlanders in Malaysia, English in tropical or sub-tropical 

 lands, such as India, where Eurasian half-breeds alone are capable 

 of founding family groups. 



The human varieties are thus seen to be, like all other zoo- 

 logical species, the outcome of their several environments. They 

 are what climate, soil, diet, pursuits and inherited characters have 

 made them, so that all sudden transitions are usually followed by 

 disastrous results 1 . "To urge the emigration of women and 

 children, or of any save those of the most robust health, to the 

 tropics, may not be to murder in the first degree, but it should 

 be classed, to put it mildly, as incitement to it." Acclimatiza- 

 tion may not be impossible, but in all extreme cases, it can be 

 effected only at great sacrifice of life, and by slow processes, 

 the most effective of which is perhaps Natural Selection. By 

 this means we may indeed suppose the world to have been first 

 peopled. 



At the same time it should be remembered that the first migra- 

 tions were all completed in inter-glacial, if not in pre-glacial ages, 

 when the climate of the globe was everywhere much milder than 

 at present. Consequently the different zones of temperature were 

 less marked, and the passage from one region to another more 

 easily effected than in later times. In a word the pleistocene 

 precursors had far less difficulty in adapting themselves to their 

 new surroundings than modern peoples have when they emigrate, 



1 The party of Eskimo men and women brought back by Lieut. Peary 

 from his Arctic expedition in 1897 were unable to endure our temperate 

 climate. Many died of pneumonia, and the survivors were so enfeebled that 

 all had to be restored to their icy homes to save their lives. Even for the 

 Algonquians of Labrador a journey to the coast is a journey to the grave. 



2 W. Z. Ripley, Acclimatization , New York, 1896, p. 24. 



