482 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



is now happening on the west coast of Africa. The colonists 

 sent there from this country preserve their bread eating habits and 

 delight in the exercise of that authority over the rice eating 

 natives which they found so unpleasant here. These natives are 

 passionately fond of bread, a fact of much significance when we 

 consider that their race in this country has ameliorated very 

 much, yet has never attained to separate existence in independent 

 communities. It is because he improves the physical condition of 

 domestic animals that man succeeds in keeping them tame ser- 

 vants. He renders them docile by ministering to their appetites — 

 by making them provide themselves with comfort by serving him. 

 In this way the colonists keep the natives about them and make 

 them servants by giving them bread. I am sorry to say the pro- 

 duction of the cereals is not likely to succeed in this colony and 

 that as yet it has been entirely dependent on the mother country 

 for flour. 



When the African race is transplanted from the eastern conti- 

 nent to the trophical regions of the West Indies and this country, 

 the difference in climate is not enough to allow us to attribute 

 it to the fact that the negro becomes more intelligent and rises in 

 the scale of being with the change. Climate in this case is no- 

 thing — food is every thing. 



If further evidence is necessary of the effect of food rather than 

 climate in modifying the character of man, we have it in the fact 

 that the Nomadic Tartar hordes living on the produce of their 

 herds — have subsisted on the same kind of food for thousands of 

 years, and have made no progression. The Tartar of to-day wan- 

 ders in just such another ox cart as is represented in the ancient 

 sculptures. His boats and tools are of the same fashion. The 

 aborigines of this country also built mounds and approximated to 

 civilization only in those regions, such as Central New- York and 

 Ohio, where they could raise maize, their only cereal. The higher 

 civilization of Mexico was connected with the culture of this 

 plant. 



Let us take another step in this direction and see if nations and 

 races degenerate by change of climate or rather by change of food. 

 The earliest indications of the presence of man on the earth j^lace 

 him in the East. Nineveh and Babylon were among the most 



