750 THE SUN THE GRAND PAINTER OF NATURE. 



But why should I multiply words to prove that 

 the sun with his different coloured rays, is the 

 great Painter of Nature ? For no indigenous white 

 race has ever been found within the tropics, and no 

 black nations in the middle or higher latitudes, if 

 we except the dark brown inhabitants of Van 

 Dieman's land, who, as Dr. Prichard observes, 

 may have come from New Guinea, the tropical 

 portion of New Holland, or some other hot cli- 

 mate. Is it not also an incontrovertible fact, that 

 Europeans become several shades darker, and 

 often quite brown, after residing fifteen or twenty 

 years in tropical India or south America ? Nor 

 is this any more remarkable than that the blush 

 of the apple, peach, and other fruits, should be 

 always deepest on the side exposed to the sun, 

 that the sky, the ocean, the evening clouds, the 

 plumage of birds and insects, with all the adorn- 

 ments of the external world, should be always 

 most richly and variously coloured where the 

 power of the sun is greatest; and diminish on to 

 the polar regions, where they are reduced to a 

 dull monotonous mixture of brown and leaden 

 grey in summer, and to whiteness during winter, 

 that those parts of animals from which the 

 solar rays have been excluded, are pale or white, 

 like celery and other plants when kept in the 

 dark, or that the offspring of brown mice when 

 constantly kept in dark cellars, is often white, 

 with reddish eyes. 



