July 1, 18G7.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



153 



"the theory which would refer the characteristic 

 differences in colour in the varieties of the human 

 species, and particularly to the degree of solar heat, 

 is entirely improved ; " and Mr. Crawford says, 

 "The Creole Spaniards, who have for as long a time 

 (three centuries) been settled in tropical America, 

 arc as fair as the people of Arragon and Andalusia, 

 with the same variety of colour in the hair aud eye 

 as their progenitors. The pure Dutch Creole colo- 

 nists of the Cape of Good Hope, after dwelling two 

 centuries among black Caffres and yellow Hottentots, 

 do not differ in colour from the people of Holland." 

 The latter fact was long ago communicated to me 

 by the late Eobert Knox. 



The readers conversant with the subject will 

 notice here that Mr. Reade has solved a problem 

 which had long bothered observers like Lubbock, 

 Prichard, Millers, and a host of others. They were 

 puzzled to know how it happened that on monu- 

 ments in Egypt, which cannot be set down as later 

 than 2,400 years before Christ, the negro appears as 

 he is seen in our day. They might have spared 

 themselves all the patient research they devoted to 

 the subject ; and it would be just as unnecessary to 

 assume an error in the established chronology, or 

 revise the calculations of Usher and Petarius. One 

 generation being enough to turn brown men black, 

 there can be no difficulty now hi understanding that 

 the rest follows as a matter of course. 



The writer in question says, "that white nations 

 have become black, we know from history and the 

 testimony of our senses." Such being the case, I hope 

 "E. A. A." will kindly give us the names of these 

 historians, and say in what part of their works they 

 state that races of men now known to be black were 

 in their time white. I was under the impression 

 that history, sacred or profane, is silent on the 

 subject of colours, as it only too often is on the 

 most interesting subjects ; that it does not tell us 

 whether the Jews of Cochin were or were not black, 

 when, at the mandate of Nebuchadnezzar, they went 

 forth from the land of the Euphrates to settle in 

 Malabar, or whether, a thousand years ago, the 

 Parsees were dark or fair ; whether a Chinaman 

 was always yellow, and a Hindoo of no certain tint. 



"E. A. A." then recommends to our notice the 

 theory put forward by Mr. Winwood Reade 

 about the nature of the blackness. He asserts that 

 the distinctive blackness of the West African negro, 

 as well as his other physical defects, are the result 

 of disease. Now this sentence proves two things ; 

 first, that Mr. Reade knows grammar better 

 than Lindley Murray, Walker, and others, and 

 secondly, that he has at one move pierced deeper 

 into the shadows of physiology, especially the 

 physiology of the skin, than such men as Wilson, 

 Miiller, Sugol, and others, going on in the old 

 stupid way of noting down facts for years without 

 venturing to draw a conclusion, would be likely to 



accomplish in a lifetime. Thanks to such teachers 

 I had hitherto believed that the blackness of the 

 negro was a normal product, and that, though it is 

 very difficult to track even a single family, yet there 

 was reason to conclude that a diseased race died out 

 in about the fourth generation at the very latest. 

 But I know better now. 



" F. A. A." further tells us that the more intense 

 the colour, the more degraded the mind, the more 

 stunted and distorted the body, and the shorter the 

 average duration of life become. Here, too, I was 

 all wrong. I was of opinion that the negro race 

 had produced specimens of mental development far 

 superior to any ever seen in the red Indian or the 

 Laplander; that Toussaint L'Ouverture, Ereidig, the 

 musician ; Hannibal, the mathematician, who rose to 

 be colonel in the Russian artillery ; Lislet, the me- 

 teorologist, Capitein, who wrote the "Dissertatio 

 de Servitude" which went through four editions, 

 were men of a far higher stamp than any brave of 

 the Rocky Indians or Hudson's Bay savage. In my 

 innocence I believe that Lillywhite or Biasson would 

 have thrashed any two Persians, and any half-dozen 

 Hindoos. Indeed, I imagined that the negro was 

 also long lived. Mais nous avons change tout cela. 



Supposing it granted that climate tends to trans- 

 form white races into brown, and then brown into 

 black, it becomes a puzzle to understand how it acts 

 so differently, not only upon different races, but 

 upon different members of the same race. On the 

 west coasts of Africa are found the Cabendas, whose 

 skins are of a moderately dark yellow. Just south 

 of them are the jet black Congo people, while im- 

 mediately to the north are the Loungos who are 

 equally black. In Ireland, which does not extend 

 over four degrees of latitude, we see the dark-haired, 

 dusky-skinned, oval-faced Milesian, and the red, or 

 brown haired, grey-eyed Celt ; while in the north- 

 west of Europe, from the southern border of Saxony, 

 south of the lowest point of Ireland, to North Cape, 

 a distance of more than twenty degrees, climate has 

 produced a perfectly uniform fair race — at least we 

 are told so in books which, by a stretch of language, 

 are constituted authorities. Again, whatever be 

 the origin of the gipsies of England, the Welsh and 

 the English, their residence here extends beyond 

 historic times. Yet climate has as little assimilated 

 them in complexion as it has in temper. The variety 

 of colour in the Hindoos has already been spoken of, 

 and it is to be remembered that this difference does 

 not in any way depend upon exposure to light, for 

 it is seen in the fishermen who are all naked alike. 

 Close to the black Jews of Cochin we find a colony 

 of white Jews who are said to have emigrated 

 thither when Titus destroyed the temple. If so, they 

 must have resided there eighteen centuries, yet they 

 have undergone no change, aud don't seem likely to 

 undergo any. 



Nor is this the only difficulty. We find not only 



