HOLMES DISTRIBUTION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 23 



are rather lighter than the Indians generally ; and the Fuegeans, 

 another old survival in the opposite cold extreme, are recently 

 described as of a deep yellow color. This fact is quite analogous 

 to the yellow color of the Hottentots, an old survival at the colder 

 extremity of Africa. The ancient Mexicans and Peruvians of the 

 high plateaus, though in the tropical zones, were probably lighter 

 than the lowland tribes. Montezuma is traditionally represented 

 as of a light yellow color. The Botocudos and some other tribes 

 are yellowish. The Yuracarus of the eastern slope of the Andes 

 are reported to be of a light yellow shade. Lighter shades appear 

 among many scattered tribes in both North and South America. 

 Mr. Darwin, on observations made upon existing peoples, fails to 

 find satisfactory proofs that climate changes color, and he resorts 

 rather to sexual selection. But it is not so clear that climate and 

 elevation, operating through a geological epoch, have not had as 

 much to do with color as sexual selection, effective as that may 

 have been. Sexual selection is made to depend upon standards of 

 beauty according to prevailing notions of beauty operating upon 

 an inherent tendency to variation. It is at least singular that the 

 black, brown, yellow and white standards of beauty should have 

 been adopted in these several zones of latitude and courses of 

 distribution, so nearly in keeping, on the whole, with the climates 

 and conditions existing in the several areas of primitive occupa- 

 tion. Doubtless, sexual selection would increase the tendency to 

 variation when once begun ; but we seem to need some cause for 

 the beginning of the variation ; and so far as this tendency may be 

 considered as the result of the environment, and of co-operative 

 conditions, it would seem most probable (and so thinks Mr. Spen- 

 cer) that these conditions are to be sought in climate as deter- 

 mined by elevation, winds, temperature, and dryness or moisture ; 

 but modes of life and inward causes may have operated as well. 

 Mr. Darwin speaks of this tendency to variation as "spontane- 

 ous." Spontaneous movement is doubtless an efficient cause, but, 

 being a subject that properly belongs to metaphysics, it cannot 

 now be discussed. But, in a merely physical point of view, it 

 may be observed that there is certainly a great difference in the 

 internal processes for the production of heat in cold and in hot 

 climates, and that a corresponding difference of physical activity 

 and mental capacity is manifest among the different races of the 



