NATURAL HISTORY OF CRF.ATIOX. 209 



valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the 

 Arab population in general liave flatter features, darker 

 skins, and coai-ser hair, tlian any other tribes of the same 

 nation.* 



The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful 

 effect in modifying the human figure in the course of 

 generations, and this even in its osseous structure. 

 About two hundred years ago, a number of people were 

 driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim 

 and Down, in Ireland, towards tlie sea-coast, where they 

 have ever since been settled, but in unusually miserable 

 circumstances, even for Ireland ; and the consequence is, 

 that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive 

 kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed 

 noses, high cheek-bones, and bow legs, together with an 

 extremely diminutive stature. These, with an abnormal 

 slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low 

 and barbarous condition all over the world ; it is parti- 

 culai'ly seen in the Australian aborigines. On the other 

 hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England is very 

 remarkal^le, being, in the main, as clearly a result of 

 good external conditions. " Coarse, unwholesome, and 

 ill-prepared food," says Buffon, '• makes the human race 

 degenerate. All those people who live miserably ai-e 

 ugly and ill-made. Even in France, the country people 

 are not so beautiful as those who live in towns; and I 

 have often remarked tJiat in those villages where the 

 people are richer and better fed than in others, the men 

 are likewise more handsome, and have better coun- 

 tenances." He might liave added, that elegant and 

 commodious dwellinL^s, cleanly habits, comfortable cloth- 



^- Bucldngliani's " Travels among the Arubs."' Tliis Tact is the more 

 vahiab'c to the argument, tis liaving been set down with no rr-gard to 

 any kind of liypothesls. 



