104 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 
into being. To all these considerations, must be added the ancient migrations 
which the different families of mankind have passed through, under the 
changing conditions imposed upon them by geographical and climatic neces- 
sities, and thus a systematic arrangement of facts is finally indicated. Phys- 
ical geography teaches us that of the two great elements, water and land, the 
latter, which is matter in a more advanced form, is far superior in the animal 
and vegetable life to which it gives origin; likewise, that low and swampy 
land is fatal to health and the highest development of man. Geology and 
Palzontology show this to have been equally true of the flora and fauna, in 
ancient days. 
Neither tropical Africa nor Asia are adapted to the Anglo-Saxon constitu- 
tion; every while colony there has been wasted by sickness and death; yet 
this is the native and natural climate of the dark races, who are there as much 
at home as is the polar bear on the shores of Greenland. When at Saigon, 
on the Meikong river, I was told by an officer of the French colony, that 24 
per cent. of French troops stationed there died annually. The British occu- 
pation of low lands in the southern portion of India, is scarcely more than a 
military possession, so far as Europeans are concerned, who cannot long live 
there, but would soon become extinct but for the constant influx of fresh 
immigration. There, a European struggles for existence, a prey to fever and 
dysentery, and is unequal to severe labor. White women, as a rule, are 
especial sufferers, rallying but poorly from any illness. White men must 
yield the tropics to the dark races. The reverse is also true; negroes are not 
comfortablé in the frigid zone. The American residents of New England 
States, as at present constituted, have a continual fight with existing condi- 
tions of climate, and their survivors and descendents, now in process of 
acclimatization as a race, are assuming a somewhat typical form. 
Whenever we examine nature, we find a perfect adaptation of animals to 
the circumstances under which they live. The constitutional temperaments 
of the different races seem to vary. The dark races are less developed than 
the white; they have a less nervous sensibility, for their physical organiza- 
tion is less delicate. Van Amridge says: ‘‘ The dark races expire less car- 
bonic acid from their lungs than the white, but transpire the fetid matter 
chiefly by the skin.’’ According to Dr. Knox, the nerves of tbeir limbs are 
one-third less than the Saxon of equal height. Great differences of shape in 
the pelvis of different races, have been classified by Doctors Vrolik and 
Weber, who thus report the four principal races: ‘‘The European is oval; 
the American, round; the Mongolian, square; and African, oblong.” 
The characteristics most relied on for the discrimination of races, are the 
color of the skin, structure of the hair, and conformation of the skull and 
skeleton. Transitions from one to the other are so gradual, that it seems 
almost impossible to draw any exact and arbitrary line of inter-demarkation. 
We now see the various branches of mankind confined to distinct localities, 
mainly bounded by isothermal lines, with distinction of form and color, with 
different social relations, religions, governments, habits, and intellectual 
powers. Wherever men have migrated, they appear to have found and dis- 
placed an aboriginal nation, and no record is believed to exist of any people 
ever migrating to a land which they found entirely destitute of inhabitants, 
