1 68 Eugene Roll in Corson 



amples of colored men who have attained considerable reputa- 

 tion, and have shown, perhaps, fine mental parts, to show the 

 beneficial influences of education and civilization upon the 

 African, and the possibilities of the race, and ignore the in- 

 fluence of the white admixture, and the credit due thereto. 



And with this evident inferiority what can we learn further 

 from biology ? 



A deterioration in physique may be looked upon as the 

 natural result of the many influences at work arising from the 

 transporting of the race to a foreign soil to be thrown into the 

 struggle for existence against a superior race, a struggle which 

 can have no ultimate issue but defeat, and by defeat I mean 

 an inability to maintain the distinctive characteristics of the 

 race. The struggle will be a slow process of fusion by which 

 the weak and unstable elements will disappear while that 

 which has any permanency will become so blended with the 

 dominant race as to lose its individuality. Of the stable and 

 the unstable the latter is by far the greater ; its instability 

 can be measured by the phj^sical degeneracy. Even to-daj^ to 

 call the colored race the African race is something of a mis- 

 nomer because it has undergone many modifications. A 

 change in language, in soil, and in climate, a change of sur- 

 roundings and associations are potent influences to eventually 

 destroy the original African traits. This struggle may, per- 

 haps, be better described as a process of assimilation by which 

 the elements ill-adapted to the growth of the dominant race 

 are thrown off, while that which is assimilable becomes grad- 

 ually absorbed into the main growth. 



L/Ct us glance a little more minutely into these factors of 

 change and decay. The change of habitat alone, a change of 

 soil and climate, has a certain influence. Man, like the ani- 

 mals and plants, bears the stamps of geographical areas. A 

 race indigenous to a certain country acquires through many 

 generations characteristics the formation of which can be 

 traced to climatic and telluric causes. One of the most inter- 

 esting departments of biology is the study of the geographical 

 distribution of animals and plants ; and man is no exception, 

 for in hira, too, we can trace the influences of the ground he 



