604 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



Dr. T. E. Scholes, in his learned and unanswerable work, " The 

 British Empire and Alliances," published in 1899, holds the view (p. 383) 

 that "nearly all the malaria which attacks white men in tropical 

 Africa is due to the action of the sun, and that the pigment on the 

 colored man's skin is the only true antidote .... While whites 

 within the heat-belt become the victims of jaundice, disordered vision, 

 shattered nerves, and sometimes subverted reason, and are compelled 

 to be birds of passage, the black man can live under the severe climatic 

 conditions mentioned with absolute immunity from the risk of such dis- 

 tressing ailments." The author last named classes the prejudice against 

 colored races — so indispensable to the development of tropical and 

 sub-tropical regions — in the same category with witchcraft and sorcery. 



Hasckel, the greatest living German writer on anthropology, has 

 deemed the subject of sufficient importance to devote some attention 

 to it in several of his works. In his " History of Creation " (vol. I., 

 pp. 150, 151) he states that as early as 1813 Dr. W. C. Wells, in a 

 paper which he read before the Royal Society, remarked that ' ' negroes 

 and mulattoes are distinguished from the white race by their immunity 

 from certain tropical diseases. One race, for example, in the middle 

 regions of Africa would thus be developed better fitted than other 

 races to bear the diseases of the country. That race would consequently 

 multiply, while others would decrease — not only from their inability 

 to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity to contend 

 with their more vigorous neighbors." " The color of this vigorous race, 

 I take for granted (says Hseckel) from what has been already said, 

 would be dark .... a darker and darker race would in course 

 of time occur ; and as the darkest would be the best fitted for the 

 climate, this would at length become the most prevalent, if not the only 

 race, in the particular country in which it had originated." The same 

 eminent author, in the work already quoted (vol. I., p. 243), adverts 

 to skin pigment and its uses in these words — " The want of the usual 

 coloring goes hand in hand with certain changes in the formation of 

 the other parts — for example, of the muscular and osseous system 

 . . . . Very frequently albinos are more feebly developed, 

 and consequently the whole structure of the body is more delicate 

 and weak than in colored animals of the same species. The organs 

 of sense and the nervous system are, in like manner, curiously affected 

 where there is this want of pigment. White cats with blue eyes are 

 nearly always deaf. White horses are distinguished from colored 

 horses by their special liability to form sarcomatous tumors. In man, 

 also, the development of pigment in the outer skin greatly influences 

 the susceptibility of the organism to certain diseases. So that Euro- 

 peans with a dark complexion, black hair, and brown eyes become 

 more easily acclimatised to tropical countries, and are less subject to 

 the diseases there prevalent (inflammation of the liver, ^^ellow fever, 

 etc.) than Europeans of white complexion, fair hair, and blue eyes." 

 Again Heeckel states the interesting fact that " the kittens of a pair 

 of black cats produce black hair before they are born, and we have 

 no reason to doubt that the black pigment in their integumentary 



