ANIMALS. 24P 



are all brown ; and those that lie most to the north are almost entirety 

 black. In this manner both extremes are unfavourable to the human 

 form and colour, and the same effects are produced under the poles 

 that are found at the line. 



With regard to the stature of different countries, that seems chiefly 

 to result from the nature of the food, and the quantity of the supply. 

 Not but that the severity of heat or cold may in some measure diminish 

 the growth, and produce a dwarfishness of make. But in general the 

 food is the great agent in producing this effect; where that is supplied 

 in large quantities, and where its quality is wholesome and nutrimental, 

 the inhabitants are generally seen above the ordinary stature. On 

 the contrary, where it is afforded in a sparing quantity, or very coarse, 

 and void of nourishment in its kind, the inhabitants degenerate, and 

 sink below the ordinary size of mankind. In this respect they resem- 

 ble other animals, whose bodies, by proper feeding, may be greatly 

 augmented. An ox, on the fertile plains of India, grows to a size four 

 times as large as the diminutive animal of the same kind bred in the 

 Alps. The horses bred in the plains are larger than those of the 

 mountain. So it is with man : the inhabitants of the valley are usually 

 found taller than those of the hill : the natives of the Highlands of 

 Scotland, for instance, are short, broad, and hardy ; those of the Low- 

 lands are tall and shapely. The inhabitants of Greenland, who live 

 upon dried fish and seals, are less than those of Gambia or Senegal, 

 where nature supplies them with vegetable and animal abundance. 



The form of the face seems rather to be the result of custom. Na- 

 tions who have long considered some artificial deformity as beautiful, 

 who have industriously lessened the feet, or flattened the nose, by de- 

 grees begin to receive the impression they are taught to assume ; and 

 nature, in a course of ages, shapes itself to the constraint, and as- 

 sumes hereditary deformity. We find nothing more common in births, 

 than for children to inherit sometimes even the accidental deformities 

 of their parents. We have many instances of squinting in the father, 

 which he received from fright, or habit, communicated to the off- 

 spring ; and I myself have seen a child distinctly marked with a scar, 

 similar to one the father had received in battle. In this manner, ac- 

 cidental deformities may become natural ones ; and by assiduity may 

 be continued, and even increased, through successive generations. 

 From this, therefore, may have arisen the small eyes and long ears of 

 the Tartar and Chinese nations. From hence originally may have 

 come the flat noses of the blacks, and the flat heads of the American 

 Indians. 



In this slight survey, therefore, I think we may see that all the va- 

 riations in the human figure, as far as they differ from our own, are 

 produced either by the rigour of the climate, the bad quality, or the 

 scantiness of the provisions, or by the savage customs of the country. 

 They are actual marks of the degeneracy in the human form ; and 

 we may consider the European figure and colour as standards to which 

 to refer all other varieties, and with which to compare them. In pro- 

 portion as the Tartar or American approaches nearer to European 

 beauty, we consider the race as less degenerated ; in proportion -is he 



