ACCLIMATIZATION. 787 



Moreover, the French nation is further divided against itself. 

 That the Provengals the offshoots of the Mediterranean branch 

 of the Aryan stock succeed better than the people of the Paris 

 basin in the tropics is generally conceded;* and the bulk of 

 French emigration to-day comes from the Rhone Valley, Corsica, 

 and Provence.f This makes the fact still more curious that these 

 same Provengals endured the hardships of Napoleon's Moscow 

 campaign far better than their comrades from Normandy and 

 Champagne. I Can it, indeed, be due to an admixture of Semitic 

 blood, as Wallace suggests ? 



This disability of the Anglo-Saxon stock does not seem to 

 indicate any less vitality, but rather the reverse.* The Crimean 

 War apparently showed that the English possessed a peculiar ad- 

 vantage over the French in their ability to recover speedily from 

 severe wounds. || In fact, the mortality after capital operations 

 in English hospitals is only about half that among the French. A 

 We have already observed that primitive peoples, while showing 

 a relative immunity from septic disorders, still remain peculiarly 

 sensitive to all changes of climate. And the case of the Anglo- 

 Saxon stock is analogous to it in this respect, having a higher 

 recuperative power conjoined to disability in becoming acclima- 

 tized. J This is undoubtedly in part due to national habits, but it 

 also appears to be rooted in race. In peopling the new lands of 

 the earth, therefore, we observe a curious complication ; for it is 

 precisely those people who need the colonies most, and who are 

 bending all tlieir political energies to that end, who labor under 

 the severest disabilities. A popular opinion is abroad that Africa 

 is to be dominated by the English and German nations. $ If there 

 be any virtue in prediction, it would rather appear that their 

 activities will be less successful as soon as the pioneering stage 



* Quatrefages, op. cit., p. 230; Jousset, p. 192; Montano, p. 449; and Levasseur, ii, 

 p. 431. 



f L'Anthropologie, v, p. 253. 



\ Bulletin de la Socie'te' d'Anthropologie, i, p. 326 ; and Revue d'Anthropologie, new 

 series, i, p. 76. 



* Dr. Beddoe, Races of Britain, p. 224, gives some exceedingly interesting observations 

 upon this point. 



I Revue d'Anthropologie, new series, i, p. 76 et seq. 



A Topinard, Elements, p. 412. 



Q The stupendous failure of the project of colonizing the State of Durango in Mexico 

 with negroes from the United States is a case in point. Vide letter in Boston Transcript, 

 dated Mexico, August 11, 1895. Dr. Brinton, in Races and Peoples, p. 40, gives some 

 valuable references upon this point. 



^ Dr. Montano, p. 447 ; Revue d'Anthropologie, second series, v, 74 : " The Anglo-Saxon 

 race is least apt of all in accommodating itself to warm climates." This fact is reluctantly 

 admitted by Dr. Felkin and other English authorities as well. 



$ Vide typical editorial m Boston Herald, May 2, 1895. 



