180 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



effect of physical conditions : thus, the inhabitants 

 of mountainous districts and of dry elevated table- 

 lands may have a better sight than dwellers in low, 

 humid, and level regions, although just the reverse 

 may be the case. Among European nations the 

 Germans are generally supposed to have weak 

 eyes, owing, some imagine, to their excessive in- 

 dulgence in tobacco ; while others attribute the 

 supposed decay to the form of type used in their 

 books, which requires closer looking at than ours 

 in reading. That they will deteriorate still further 

 in this direction, and from being a spectacled 

 people become a blind one, to the joy of their 

 enemies, is not likely to happen, and probably the 

 decadence has been a great deal exaggerated. 

 Animals living in darkness become near-sighted, 

 and then nearer-sighted still, and so on progres- 

 sively until the vanishing point is reached. In a 

 community or nation a similar decline might begin 

 from much reading of German books, or perpetual 

 smoking of pipes with big china bowls, or from 

 some other unknown cause; but the decay could 

 not progress far, because there is nothing in man 

 to take the place of sight, as there is in the blind 

 cave rats and fishes and insects. And if we could 

 survey mankind from China to Peru with all the 

 scientific appliances which .are brought to bear on 

 the Board-school children in London, and on the 

 nation generally, the differences in the powers of 

 vision in the various races, nations, and tribes, 

 would probably appear very insignificant. The 



