284 Influence of Tropical Climate on Wool. 



tlie fact, though he cannot say positively that it is so, not 

 having attended sufficiently to the subject. 



Interesting in itself, as exemplifying how Nature fits an 

 animal, the native of a cool climate, by a change in its cloth- 

 ing, to endure without discomfort the heats of a tropical re- 

 gion, it is not, as it appears to me, without value in its ana- 

 logical applications. 



Though so much changed in appearance as is the wool in 

 passing into hair, the one differs as little from the other in 

 intimate structure as the hair of the woolly-headed Afri- 

 can does from the straight, lank hair of the North Ameri- 

 can Indian, or as this does from the hair of the European. 

 Examined under a high magnifying power, and with care, 

 the differences in the qualities of all these kinds of hair, 

 whether of the sheep or of man — colour apart — appear to be 

 merely in degree. The wool of the sheep and its hair are 

 both solid, — both exhibit the same transverse markings, the 

 one strongly, the other feebly; and so of their other properties. 

 The same may be said of the hair of the several varieties of 

 the human race. And, keeping to the analogy, with which 

 all experience is in accordance, we may confidently conclude, 

 that provident Nature has not been less careful of man than 

 of the brute, and that what is peculiar in the hair of each 

 variety of the human race, as in the colour of the skin of 

 each, is to be viewed rather as an excellence, connected with 

 climate, and the effect of the adapting power of climate, than 

 in any instance as a deformity or an unseemly defect. 



Lksketh How, Ambleside, 

 ^th March 1852. 



Upoti Iodine in the Air, the Water, the Soil, and the Ali- 

 mentary Products of the Alps of France and of Piedmont, 

 By M. Ad. Chatin. 



A. Arable soils do not furnish to water the same quantity 

 of iodurets ; and the variations that they exhibit, in this re- 

 spect, generally correspond to those observed in the air and 

 in soft waters. We may form an idea <jf these variations, by 



