LIGHT AND LIFE. 125 



air, while the women, kept shut up, have a pale-yellow 

 complexion. Barrow asserts that the Mantchoo Tartars 

 have grown whiter during their abode in China. Remusat, 

 Pallas, and Gutzlaff, speak of the Chinese women as re- 

 markable for a European fairness. The Jewesses of Cairo 

 or Syria, always hidden under veils or in their houses, have 

 a pallid, dead color. In the yellow races of the Sumatra 

 Sound and the Maldives, the women, always covered up, 

 are pale like tallow. We know, too, that the Esquimaux 

 bleach during their long winter. These phenomena, no 

 doubt, are the results of several influences acting at once, 

 and light does not play the sole part in them. Heat and 

 other conditions of the medium probably have a share in 

 these operations of color. Still, the peculiar and powerful 

 effect of luminous radiation as a part of them is beyond 

 dispute. 



The whole system of organic functions shares in the 

 benefits of light. Darkness seems to favor the preponder- 

 ance of the lymphatic system, a susceptibility to catarrh 

 in the mucous membranes, flaccidity of the soft parts, 

 swellings and distortions of the bony system, etc. Miners 

 and workmen employed in ill-lighted shops are exposed to 

 all these causes of physiological suffering. We may notice, 

 with regard to this, that certain rays of the solar beam 

 affect animals like darkness; among others, the orange 

 light, which, according to Bert, hurts the development of 

 batrachians. Now, if this light is injurious to animals, it 

 is not so to plants, as we have seen. In exchange, green 

 light, which is hurtful to vegetables, is extremely favorable 

 to animals. There is a kind of opposition and balance, 

 then, as respects luminous affinities, between the two great 

 kingdoms of life. White light, as Dubrunfaut says, seems 

 to split up under the influence of living beings into two 

 complementary groups, a green group and an orange 

 group, which exhibit in Nature antagonistic properties. It 



