104 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



and do not suffer injury either from the climate or the 

 work, if not exposed to infectious disease while on shore. 

 The editor of the Ceylon Observer, commenting on my 

 letter on this subject in the Daily Chronicle, adduced case 

 after case of officers, planters, doctors, &c., who had lived 

 from twenty-five up to fifty-eight years in Ceylon and 

 have retained almost continuous good health. He also 

 refers to Dutch families descended from settlers who came 

 out from 150 to 200 years ago, and who have maintained 

 average good health even in the hot country of the plains. 

 In the Moluccas there are even more striking examples, 

 many of the Dutch families having been continuously on 

 the islands for 300 years, and they have still the fair 

 complexions and robustness of form characteristic of their 

 kinsfolk in Holland. The Government physician at 

 Amboyna, a German, assured me also that the race is 

 quite as prolific as in Europe, families of ten or a dozen 

 children being not uncommon. The Dutch, however, live 

 sensibly in the tropics, doing all their official work between 

 the hours of 7 and 12 a.m., resting in the afternoon, and 

 going out in the evening. 



But perhaps the most conclusive example is that of 

 Queensland, the climate of which is completely tropical ; 

 yet white men work in every part of it. Whether as 

 gold miners, sheep shearers, sugar workers or railway 

 builders, there has never been any complaint that white 

 men cannot work ; while almost all the heavy mechanical 

 work of the country, engineering of every kind, carpentering 

 and all the various building trades, and the scores of 

 varied industries of a civilized community are carried on 

 by white workmen without any difficulty and with no 

 special effect on their general health. In an article on 

 " Industrial Expansion in Queensland " ( Westminster 

 Revieiv, March, 1897), Mr. T. M. Donovan tells us that 

 many of the large estates have now been broken up into 

 smal] farms of about eighty acres each, and sold to white 

 farmers, and he adds : 



"Where a few years ago there was a large plantati(^n worked ])y 

 gangs of South Sea Islanders, there are now twenty or thirty com- 

 fortable homesteads. And the contention that white Eurojjean 



