598 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



immunity than culored people. T can find, however, no shadow of 

 proof in the doctor's report for this affirmation. The theory is totally 

 opposed to the universally accepted belief of anthropologists, viz., 

 that the skin- color of human races is determined by their proximity 

 to or distance from the equator, as the case may be. There is a con- 

 sensus of opinion among all recognised authorities on the subject that 

 the sole raison d'etre for the evolution of a pigmented skin, in different 

 degrees under natures law, is that the colored races are near or at a 

 certain distance from the equator. Any other interpretation of the 

 matter is absolutely incompatible with the facts. Possessors of the 

 blackest skin are always indigenous to equatorial regions or descendants 

 of those who are. In countries near tropical limits, the natives wha 

 have lived in that area for many generations are mostly brown. Be- 

 tween 23|° and 30° their color is still lighter. As we pass from 30° 

 t^o 50°, and still further north and south — where there is no need of the 

 protection given by a colored skin — we reach the region chiefly occupied 

 in Europe, North America, and latitudes correspondin-z in the Southern 

 Hemisphere, by white inhabitants. 



Dr. Ramsay Smith would seem to imply that whites are even better 

 able to withstand unfavorable climatic influences in the tropics than 

 Kanakas. He adduces statistics to show that the death rate among 

 whites in Queensland is only 11.56 per 1,000 against 36. '^9 among 

 Kanakas ; but the statistical basis of his calculation is unsound. The 

 bulk of the Kanakas have been living in North Queensland, and it is 

 unfair to make a comparison between a colored race chiefly confined 

 to the tropics and the vastly more populous white race residing chiefly 

 in South Queensland. Another point still more fallacious is the assump- 

 tion that the alleged higher death-rate among Kanakas, as compared 

 with whites, is necessarily due to climatic causes, Avhen, on the contrary, 

 it is a rule that the change in a cohered man's diet, habits, and general 

 environment, when brought in habitual contact with civilisation, has 

 the effect of generating diseases to which he is not liable at a distance 

 from the virus of white civilisation. There is no evidence to prove 

 that the death-rate among Kanakas, in their native islands, bears so 

 high a proportion from the causes which are so fatal to them in Queens- 

 land. The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that the higher death- 

 rate prevailing among them in North Queensland is ascribed to the 

 ■wrong cause, and has nothing to do with climate. Consequently the 

 assertion that whites can bear a tropical climate with less risk of disease 

 from that source falls to the ground. Besides, the attempted com- 

 parison between the effects of climate on whites and Kanakas is vitiated 

 by the admission of Dr. Ramsay Smith that it is extremely rare " for 

 whites to remain for lengthened periods in the Australian tropics." 

 So that, on every ground, the argument for the greater power of resis- 

 tance to tropical heat being with whites utterly disappears. But 

 even if that race could be perpetuated in the tropics more effectively 

 than the colored races, this advantage could only be secured to the 

 whites by nature's protective method of pigmentation. Such an event, 

 according to the theory of Dr, Ramsay Smith, would be followed in 



