Notices respecting New Books. 415 



habiting the larger towns have for years in any way depended on 

 such periodical reinfusion for life and vigour. That climate has pro ^ 

 duced some effect, as diminished muscular and adipose development, 

 a somewhat lower average longevity, we readily admit. Change of 

 condition, too, has engendered different habits, a peculiar tone of 

 thought, &c. ; but for the present let us not talk of degradation. 

 The following suggestions of Dr. Latham throw some light on the 

 subject of acclimatization. 



"A European regiment is decimated by being placed on the 

 Gambia, or in Sierra Leone. The American Anglo-Saxon is said to 

 have lost the freshness of the European — to have become brown in 

 colour, and wiry in muscle. Perhaps he has. Yet what does this 

 prove ? Merely the effect of sudden changes ; the results of distant 

 transplantation ; the imperfect character of those forms of acclima- 

 tization which are not gradual' It was not in this way that the 

 world was originally peopled. New climates were approached by 

 degrees, step by step, by enlargement and extension of the circum- 

 ference of a previously acclimated family. Hence the experience of 

 the kind in question, valuable as it is in the way of Medical Police, 

 is comparatively worthless in a theory as to the Migrations of Man- 

 kind. Take a man from Caucasus to the Gold Coast, and he either 

 dies or takes a fever. But would he do so if his previous sojourn had 

 been on the Gambia, his grandfather's on the Senegal, his ancestor's 

 in the tenth degree on the Nile, and that ancestor's ancestor's on 

 the Jordan — thus going back till we reached the first remote patriarch 

 of the migration on the Phasis ? This is an experiment which no 

 single generation can either make or observe ; yet less than this is 

 no experiment at all, no imitation of that particular operation of 

 Nature which we are so curious to investigate." — Pp. 69, 70. 



In respect to the phsenomena of the present distribution of races, 

 and the probable order of migrations, several circumstances must be 

 considered. Where contiguous races differ materially in character, 

 as in the case of the Majyars and surrounding European tribes, the 

 Hottentots and Kafirs, either encroachment or displacement of the 

 isolated family is implied. Where contiguous islands are peopled 

 by different tribes, the same conclusion is not necessarily forced 

 upon us. " The populations of two islands may agree, whilst that 

 of a whole archipelago lying between them may differ. Yet this is 

 no discontinuity ; since the sea is an unbroken chain, and the inter- 

 vening obstacle can be sailed round instead of crossed. The nearest 

 way from the continent of Asia to the Tahitian archipelago — the 

 nearest part of Polynesia — is via, New Guinea, New Ireland, and 

 the New Hebrides. All these islands, however, are inhahited by a 

 different division of the oceanic population. Does this indicate dis- 

 placement ? No. It merely suggests the Philippines, the Pelews, 

 the Carolines, the Ralik and Radak groups, and the Navigator's Isles 

 as the route ; and such it almost certainly was." 



We perfectly agree with Dr. Latham in making so light of the 

 migration from Asia to America. To account for the peopling of the 

 Kew World, there is no occasion to call up from the deep any fabu- 



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