iter ee ig ee ea te ees 
zr, 51.] TO CHARLES L. BRACE. 461 
CAMBRIDGE, April 22, 1862 (?) 
Dear Brace,— You are very weleome to such 
casual criticism as I can offer on your two pages of 
manuscript. 
The general fact of a segregated people (or indi- 
viduals of an animal species) becoming best adapted 
to the particular climate, etc., through Natural Selec- 
tion is clear enough, the best adapted alone surviving 
in the long run, and the peculiarities transmitted by 
the close breeding. 
But what your statements tend to make out is, not 
the tendency of a human race to return to its original 
type, but only the tendency of the causes which pro- 
duced a certain effect once, to produce it again, the 
circumstances continuing, — to produce it in the Fel- 
lahs as it produced it in the remote ancestors of the 
Pharaohs. 
That is all safe enough. But your case does not 
prove that unless you make out that the Egyptian 
race was nearly destroyed by crossings. 
I do not know, but I doubt if you can show that, 
that the crossings were ever enough to modify the 
Egyptian people, at least the common people, who 
make up the bulk. Slight infusions, you see, would 
be worked out. The foreign though conquering race 
would be less prolific and less enduring than the 
native, etc., ete. So is it not likely that in the Fel- 
lahs you have the representatives of the old Egyptians 
continued, not reproduced, as your remarks would 
partly lead ome to suppose your meaning ? 
Besides, once having got a race you must not make 
too much of climate, to the overlooking of the wonder- 
ful persistence of any variety when close bred. See 
the Jews: the nose remains hooked, etc., under all 
climates. 
