1 64 VESTIGES OF THE 



generation of bees may be very different from those 

 concerned in the reproduction of the higher animals. 

 There is a unity throughout nature which makes the one 

 case an instructive reflection of the other. 



We shall now see an instance of development operating 

 within the production of what approaches to the cha- 

 racter of variety of species. It is fully established that a 

 human family, tribe, or nation is liable, in the course of 

 generations, to be either advanced from a mean form to 

 a higher one, or degraded from a higher to a lower, by 

 the influence of the physical conditions in which it lives. 

 The coarse features, and other structural peculiarities of 

 the negro race only continue while these people live 

 amidst the circumstances usually associated with bar- 

 barism. In a more temperate clime, and higher social 

 state, the face and figure become greatly refined. The 

 few African nations which possess any civilisation also 

 exhibit forms approaching the European ; and when the 

 same people in the United States of America have en- 

 joyed a within-door life for several generations, they 

 assimilate to the whites amongst whom they live. On 

 the other hand, there are authentic instances of a people 

 originally well-formed and good-looking, being brought, 

 by imperfect diet and a variety of physical hardships, to 

 a meaner form. It is remarkable that prominence of 

 the jaws, a recession and diminution of the cranium, and 

 an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, are pecu- 

 liarities always produced by these miserable conditions, 

 for they indicate an unequivocal retrogression towards 

 the type of the lower animals. Thus we see nature 

 alike willing to go back and to go forward. Both eflects 

 are simply the result of the operation of the law of 

 development in the generative system. Give good 

 conditions, it advance:^ ; bad ones, it recedes. Now, 



