38 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



sighted.* Short-sight and long-sight certainly tend to 

 be inherited, f The inferiority of Europeans, in comparison 

 with savages, in eyesight and in the other senses, is no 

 doubt the accumulated and transmitted effect of lessened 

 use during many generations ; f or Rengger J states that he 

 has repeatedly observed Europeans, who had been brought 

 up and spent their whole lives with the wild Indians, who 

 nevertheless did not equal them in the sharpness of their 

 senses. The same naturalist observes that the cavities in 

 the skull for the reception of the several sense-organs are 

 larger in the American aborigines than in Europeans ; and 

 this probably indicates a corresponding difference in the 

 dimensions of the organs themselves. Blumenbach has 

 also remarked on the large size of the nasal cavities in the 

 skulls of the American aborigines, and connects this fact 

 with their remarkably acute power of smell. The Mon- 

 golians of the plains of Northern Asia, according to Pallas, 

 have wonderfully perfect senses; and Prichard believes that 

 the great breadth of their skulls across the zygomas follows 

 from their highly developed sense-organs. 



The Quechua Indians inhabit the lofty plateaux of Peru; 

 and Alcide d'Orbigny states || that, from continually breath- 

 ing a highly rarefied atmosphere, they have acquired chests 

 and lungs of extraordinary dimensions. The cells, also, of 

 the lungs are larger and more numerous than in Europeans. 



* It is a singular and unexpected fact that sailors are inferior to 

 landsmen in their mean distance of distinct vision. Dr. B. A. Gould 

 (" Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion," 1869, p. 530), has 

 proved this to be the case ; and he accounts for it by the ordinary 

 range of vision in sailors being " restricted to the length of the vessel 

 and the height of the masts." 







f " The Variation of Animals under Domestication," vol. i, p. 8. 



\ is Saugethiere von Paraguay," s. 8, 10. I have had good oppor- 

 tunities for observing the extraordinary power of eyesight in the 

 Fuegians. See also Lawrence (" Lectures on Physiology," etc., 1822, 

 p. 404) on this same subject. M. Giraud-Teulon has recently col- 

 lected ("Revue des Cours Sclentifiques," 1870, p. 625) a large and 

 valuable body of evidence proving that the cause of short-sight, 

 " C'est le travail assidu, de pres." 



% Prichard, " Phys. Hist, of Mankind," on the authority of Blum- 

 enbach, vol. i, 1851, p. 311 ; for the statement by Pallas, vol. iv, 

 1844, p. 407. 



| Quoted by Prichard, " Researches into the Phys. Hist, of Man- 

 kind," vol v, 



