ANIMALS. 95 



The form of the face seems rather to be the re- 

 sult of custom. Nations who have long consider- 

 ed some artificial deformity as beautiful, who have 

 industriously lessened the feet, or flattened the 

 nose, by degrees begin to receive the impression 

 they are taught to assume ; and nature, in a 

 course of ages, shapes itself to the constraint, and 

 assumes hereditary deformity. We find nothing 

 more common in births than for children to in- 

 herit 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 offspring ; 

 and I myself have seen a child distinctly marked 

 with a scar, similar to one the father had received 

 in battle. In this manner accidental deformities 

 may become natural ones ; and by assiduity may 

 be continued, and even increased, through suc- 

 cessive generations. From this, .therefore, may 

 have arisen the small eyes and long ears of the 

 Tartar and Chinese nations. From hence origi- 

 nally 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 variations in the human figure, as 

 far as they differ from our own, are produced 

 either by the rigour of the climate, the bad qua- 

 lity 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 



