236 THE DESCENT OF MAN [Part I. 



ascertain how far it held good. The 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 withstood the climate in 

 a wonderful manner. When he first arrived as a boy on 

 the coast, an old and experienced negro chief predicted 

 from his appearance that this would prove the case. Dr. 

 Nicholson, of Antigua, after having attended to this sub- 

 ject, wrote to me that he did not think that dark-colored 

 Europeans escaped the yellow fever better than those that 

 were light-colored. 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 color of the black races may have 

 resulted from darker and darker individuals having sur- 

 vived in greater numbers, during their exposure to the 

 fever-ffeneratins: miasmas of their native countries. 



Although with our present knowledge we cannot ac- 

 count for the strongly-marked differences in color between 

 the races of man, either through correlation with consti- 

 tutional peculiarities, or through the direct action of cli- 

 mate ; yet we must not quite ignore the latter agency, for 

 there is good reason to believe that some inherited effect 

 is thus produced. 50 



interest, as indicating one means by which a race of men inhabiting from 

 a remote period an unhealthy tropical climate, might have become dark- 

 colored by the better preservation of dark-haired or dark-complexioned 

 individuals during a long succession of generations." 



49 ' Anthropological Review,' Jan. 1866, p. xxi. 



50 See, for instance, Quatrefages (' Revue des Cours Scientifiques,' 

 Oct. 10, 1868, p. 724) on the effects of residence in Abyssinia and Arabia, 

 and other analogous cases. Dr. Rolle (Der Mensch, seine Abstammung, 



