88 ACQUIRED CHARACTERS sec. 



and eyes in Germany must be principally referred to this 

 process. But that the dark colour of the inhabitants of 

 hot countries cannot be explained by sexual admixture, any 

 more than the light colour of cave animals (see below), needs 

 no elaborate argument. 



To me it is utterly incomprehensible, not so much that 

 views opposed to the relation of the sun to the dark colouring 

 of the skin are expressed, but that, without further investiga- 

 tion and reflection, any scientific importance is given to 

 them. To form a decisive judgment on the question one 

 must travel through a region like the Xile valley, w^hicli 

 forms a uniform, continuous, isolated, whole — not over 

 mountain and valley, which not only separate different tribes, 

 but also afford sudden transitions in climatic conditions, and 

 with them in the habits of life of the inhabitants. The 

 perfectly gradual transition in the colour of the inhabitants 

 from brownish yellow to black in the Nile valley in passing 

 from the Delta to the Soudan is particularly conclusive as 

 evidence for my contention, for the very reason that various 

 races originally of various colours dwell there. The Berbers, 

 who live from the First Cataract southwards to Nubia, are as 

 a race much darker than the Egyptians. The anthropo- 

 logical separation of the two races is at the present day 

 perfectly distinct, and the difference between the languages, 

 except for one or two interchanges of words, is well-marked. 

 The traveller accustomed to the sound of Arabian, who has 

 learnt to make himself understood in that tongue, beyond 

 Assouan no longer understands a word of the language of the 

 natives. And yet the colour of the neighbouring Egj^tians 

 passes into that of the Berbers, that is, the former at Assouan 

 are scarcely lighter than the latter, whose colour again towards 

 Wadi-Halfa is still blacker than at Assouan. Crossing between 

 the two peoples has of course to be considered, but it is not 

 the most important cause of the facts described. On this 



