ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHKOPOLOGY. 



387 



New England, which was made by English- 

 men, having all the characteristics of the An- 

 glo-Saxon race. , But now, the purely English 

 breed is no longer seen. An Americo-Euro- 

 pean type has been developed ; and this is 

 most marked in the Eastern States, where the 

 race is the least mixed. Hence, it cannot be 

 considered the effect of intermixture ; and con- 

 sequently, again, it must be produced by ex- 

 ternal influences. 



The new type is strongly marked by certain 

 physical characters. Referring the change of 

 type chiefly to the influences of climate, these 

 appear [to explain more definitely M. Desor's 

 statements] to take effect primarily, or in most 

 marked degree, upon the assimilative and nu- 

 tritive functions of the body, and upon the 

 glandular or secretory system; and they are 

 evidenced chiefly in the loss of adipose tissue 

 and shrinking of the muscles, with a general 

 tendency to attenuation of form, to pallor of 

 the surface, and often delicacy of appearance ; 

 these conditions being frequently accompanied 

 with marked excitability, and lack of the pow- 

 er of endurance. An absence of corpulence 

 is almost the invariable rule, the exceptions be- 

 ing, more frequently than otherwise, in case of 

 foreigners. The tendency to delicacy of form 

 and lack of endurance, especially in women, is 

 beginning to be deplored by the American peo- 

 ple themselves. , 



The writer thinks that very few Europeans 

 grow fat in the United States ; but that Amer- 

 icans residing for a considerable time in Europe 

 grow more hearty and portly, and that the 

 same result is apt to occur to those who re- 

 turn to Europe after a long stay in America. 

 He says that the hair which, when kept prop- 

 erly moist by the oily secretion of the scalp, 

 inclines to curl tends in America to dryness, 

 and to grow stiff 1 ' and lank ; and he appears to 

 assert that in American cities hair-dressers are 

 more numerous than in others, as also that the 

 hair of Europeans coming to the country re- 

 quires more softening with pomade, &c., than 

 it had been wont to do. 



As to personal characteristics, the same wri- 

 ter asserts that the people of this country dis- 

 play a general, feverish activity ; that every 

 one is in a hurry ; and that, as a rule, people 

 do not walk, but run. This activity appears 

 instinctive ; it is the result of habit, or of an 

 innate restlessness. He repeats the charge, so 

 often made against us, of fast eating ; and he 

 thinks that, in this country, the use of spiritu- 

 ous liquors [and what is to be said of tobacco ?] 

 proves more hurtful than in the countries of 

 Europe. 



Possible Causes of the Peculiar Action of 

 the North American Climate. It is not diffi- 

 cult to understand that, of the statements which 

 have been made by European writers on the 

 subject of the climate of North America, and 

 the influences supposed to be attributable to it, 

 some are over-colored ; nor, to believe that some 

 of them are even drawn from imagination, or 



find their secret source hi the jealousies of na- 

 tions and races; and without doubt, to some 

 extent, also, in the much more practical mo- 

 tive of a desire to discourage the emigration 

 to this country, continually and actively going 

 on from the countries of Western and Central 

 Europe, of those who constitute an important 

 portion of the capable and productive mem- 

 bers of their own industrial classes. But ad- 

 mitting thus much, there is still left in the 

 statements referred to a residuum of unques- 

 tionable fact, and which, moreover, is of such 

 character as to render it of the deepest inter- 

 est to the people of this country. It cannot, 

 the writer is of opinion, be denied that in the 

 population of the United States, in course of 

 two, or at most three generations, the Teuton 

 ceases to be Teutonic, the Englishman to be 

 English, the Celt to be Celtic, and so on ; nor, 

 that all these blend or lose themselves in a 

 new race, which has physiological, physiog- 

 nomical, and to some extent mental character- 

 istics peculiar to itself; nor, yet again, that 

 these characteristics are in so marked a degree 

 individual and uniform, as to forbid the suppo- 

 sition that they may be the merely incidental 

 result of combination of the traits of two or 

 more parent stocks. 



It by no means follows that, as some have 

 argued, the new type here developing is but a 

 stage in a physical decay or decline ; indeed, 

 it would be easy to cite many facts that go to 

 prove the contrary. In the statement of the 

 physiological and personal characteristics point- 

 ed out in the preceding section as marking that 

 type, there is, however, a degree of truth. In 

 the opinion of the compiler of this article, the 

 very nature of the effects which have already 

 been remarked points to the cause or causes by 

 which they are produced, indicating in fact 

 that those causes are climatic, or atmospheric ; 

 and he desires briefly to intimate in this place 

 and without going into details of argument 

 whatj it has appeared to him, are some of 

 those causes, if they be not indeed the precise 

 ones to which the peculiarities of climatic in- 

 fluence here are to be attributed. 



It will be borne in mind that, thus far, the 

 climate of our country may be said to have 

 been by immigrant European races fairly test- 

 ed only in the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the inte- 

 rior regions, and not as yet in those bordering 

 on the Pacific. Now, the effect of unequal so- 

 lar heat in different latitudes and of the earth's 

 rotation, combined, it is well known, is to keep 

 up certain great circulations both in the oceans 

 and the atmosphere. The resulting warm 

 ocean currents move at once to the poles and 

 eastwardly, and hence flow to the westward 

 shores of the continents, rendering the climate . 

 of these, for any given latitude, warmer than 

 that of the eastern shores, against which on 

 the contrary the returning cold currents tend 

 to move; while another consequence isj that 

 in temperate latitudes generally, the air of the 

 western is also more humid than is that of the 



