454 VARIETIES OP MANKIND. 



With civilisation and barbarism, however, they appear certainly 

 connected. We should beforehand be inclined to imagine that 

 the most excellent developement of every animated species would 

 be effected where all its wants were best supplied, its powers all 

 duly called forth, and all injurious or unpleasant circumstances 

 least prevalent : and vice versa. Every one knows the effect of 

 cultivation in the vegetable kingdom. But experience teaches us 

 that no change brought about in an animal after birth can be 

 transmitted to the offspring : the causes of change in a species 

 must therefore operate, not by altering the parents, but by dis- 

 posing them to produce an offspring more or less different from 

 themselves. (Such is Mr. Hunter's view of the question,* and 

 it is certainly confirmed by every fact.f ) Uncivilised nations ex- 

 posed to the inclemency of the weather, supported by precarious 

 and frequently unwholesome food, and having none of the dis- 

 tinguishing energies of their nature called forth, are generally 

 dark coloured and less distant from brutes in conformation ; 



the sooty colour of the native Hottentots ; the Guebrcs and Parsees, marrying 

 only among themselves, remain white in the midst of the olive-coloured 

 Hindus.' J. T. Virey, Histoire Naturelle dn genre Itumain. Tome premier. 

 p. 124. 



* I fear Mr. Hunter has not generally the credit of this observation, but the 

 following passage shows it to be clearly his. " As animals are known to pro- 

 duce young which are different from themselves in colour, form, and disposi- 

 tion, arising from what may be called the unnatural mode of life, it shews this 

 curious power of accommodation in the animal economy, that although edu- 

 cation can produce no change in the colour, form, or disposition of the animal , 

 yet it is capable of producing a principle which becomes so natural to the 

 animal that it shall beget young different in colour and form ; and so altered 

 in disposition, as to be more easily trained up to the offices in which tl»ey have 

 been usually einplq£d ; and having these dispositions suitable to such changes 

 of form." Hunter, On the wolf, jackall, and dog. 1. c. 



t May not some circumstances that produce a change in the offspring by 

 acting through the parent, produce the same change likewise in the parent, 

 although the change in the latter is nut the cause of the change in the off- 

 jpring ? 



