PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION P. 605 



on climatology, in his " Far-Eastern Tropics," maintains that the 

 white race cannot do field work continuously without seriously under- 

 mining health and shortening life nearer the tropics than latitude 30°, 

 under an average heat of 68° Fahr. 



When presiding at the reading of a paper on " The Products of 

 Australia," by Mr. J. G. Jenkins, Agent-General for 8outh Australia, 

 before the Royal Colonial Institute, Sir George S. Clarke, a former 

 Governor of Victoria, said — " While the settled portions of Australia 

 are not yet fully developed, tropical Australia, full of great possibilities, 

 is practically in a state of nature .... I do not believe that 

 legislation can alter the laws of nature, and the experience of the world 

 is that white field labor is impossible in the tropics. It must be remem- 

 bered that the whole of the United States, and all except a little strip 

 of Argentina, lie outside the tropics. I have never heard any valid 

 reason why what Mr. Jenkins calls ' suitable labor ' should not be 

 employed in the tropical part of Australia, and rigidly limited to that 

 part." In the discussion of the same paper, Lord Brassey, also an 

 ex-Governor of Victoria, said — " I feel persuaded that the aid of the 

 tropical races might be very valuable in those tropical parts ; and 

 I do not see why that kind of labor should not be engaged under con- 

 ditions which are perfectly free and voluntary, and which involve 

 no degradation of any kind to those concerned." 



The late Herbert Spencer, England's greatest philosophic thinker 

 of the nineteenth centnry, in hh " Study of Sociology," expresses his 

 views on the subject in the following decisive terms : — " Men having 

 constitutions fitted for one climate cannot be fitted to an extremely 

 different climate by persistentlv living in it, because they do not survive 

 generation after generation. Such changes can be brought about only 

 by slow spreadings of the race through intermediate regions having 

 intermediate climates to which succeeding generations are accustomed, 

 little by little." 



In his forcible work entitled " Europe and Asia " Mr. Meredith 

 Townsend remarks — " Those who say, with Mr. Frederick Boyle and 

 Mr. Bates, that whites can thrive and develop in the tropics, only 

 dream. History is opposed to them .... That must have 

 been a most operative law which originally divided mankind so that 

 the white race was confined to Europe, that the black race populated 

 Africa, ana th-^t the huge bulk of Asia, the most fertile and tempting 

 of all the continents, was filled with yellow and brown men .... 

 The white people flourish best within strictly temperate regions. Hot 

 lands do not, with all their natural advantages, ever tend to produce 

 energy . . . . The first generation of white settlers in such 

 countries suffers terribly from unaccustomed diseases ; from the 

 depressing effect of a change of climate, and from the shock involved 

 in a violent change of daily habitudes as to diet, hours of labors, and 

 general social life. This suffering, involving much mortality, would 

 discourage the average colonist to such a degree that he would not 

 remain for the time which even Mr. Boyle admits to be necessary to 

 secure him complete acclimatisation , . . ." (pp. 343-4). 



