EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 231 



from Albinoes) are not unfrequently born among the Negroes, 

 and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families. 

 There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set of perfectly 

 black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry 

 no such blood had intermingled. This occurred in the valley 

 of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population 

 in general have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, 

 than any other tribes of the same nation. 1 



The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect 

 in modifying the human figure in the course of generations, 

 and this even in its osseous structure. About two hundred 

 years ago, a number of people were driven by a barbarous 

 policy from the counties of Antrim and Down, in Ireland, 

 towards the sea-coast, where they have ever since been settled, 

 but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland ; and 

 the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the 

 most repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, 

 depressed noses, high cheek-bones, and bowed legs, together 

 with an extremely diminutive stature. These with an abnormal 

 slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and 

 barbarous condition all over the world ; it is particularly seen 

 in the Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty 

 of the higher ranks ' in England is very remarkable, being in 

 the main as clearly a result of good external conditions. 

 " Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared food," says Buffon, 

 "makes the human race degenerate. All those people who 

 live miserably are ugly and ill-made. Even in France, the 

 country-people are not so beautiful as those who live in towns ; 

 and I have often remarked that in those villages where the 

 people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are 

 likewise more handsome, and have better countenances." He 

 might have added, that elegant and commodious dwellings, 

 cleanly habits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the 

 open air only as much as health requires, co-operate with food 

 in increasing the elegance of a race of human beings. 



Attention has lately been attracted by a physiological specu- 

 lation, having for its object to show that some of the broader 

 features of the great families of mankind are expressly con- 



1 Buckingham's Travels among the Arabs. 



A brief notice, by the Rev. Lansdown Guilding, St. Vincent, of a 

 Negro couple in that parish, having, amongst other children, one as fair 

 as an European, with European features, white hair, and blue eyes, is 

 inserted in the Magazine of Natural History, vii. 589. 



