Chap. VII. THE RACES OF MAN. 245 



late Dr. Daniell, who had long lived on the West Coast 

 of Africa, told me that he did not believe in any such 

 relation. He was himself unusually fair, and had with- 

 stood the climate in a wonderful manner. When he 

 first arrived as a boy on the coast, an old and expe- 

 rienced negro chief predicted from his appearance that 

 this would prove the case. Dr. Nicholson, of Antigua, 

 after having attended to this subject, wrote to me that 

 he did not think that dark-coloured Europeans escaped 

 the yellow-fever better than those that were light- 

 coloured. Mr. J. M. Harris altogether denies 49 that 

 Europeans with dark hair withstand a hot climate 

 better than other men ; on the contrary, experience has 

 taught him in making a selection of men for service 

 on the coast of Africa, to choose those with red hair. 

 As far, therefore, as these slight indications serve, there 

 seems no foundation for the hypothesis, which has been 

 accepted by several writers, that the colour of the black 

 races may have resulted from darker and darker indi- 

 viduals having survived in greater numbers, during 

 their exposure to the fever-generating miasmas of their 

 native countries. 



Although with our present knowledge we cannot 

 account for the strongly-marked differences in colour 

 between the races of man, either through correlation 

 with constitutional peculiarities, or through the direct 

 action of climate ; yet we must not quite ignore the 



" be discovered, but the investigation is well worth making. In case 

 "any positive result were obtained, it might be of some practical use 

 " in selecting men for any particular service. Theoretically the result 

 " would be of high interest, as indicating one means by which a race 

 " of men inhabiting from a remote period an unhealthy tropical climate, 

 " might have become dark-coloured by the better preservation of dark- 

 " haired or dark-complexioned individuals during a long succession of 

 " generations." 



49 ' Anthropological Review,' Jan. 18GG, p. xxi. 



