186 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



With the exception of the fact that the life of the Eskimo is pos- 

 sibly a more healthy one than that of his Indian brother, the fore- 

 going remarks may equally and perhaps moreespecially apply to him, 

 and when it is taken into consideration that for some nine months 

 of the year he is breathing an air condensed and supercharged with 

 oxygen, it must directly and indirectly account for his rapid and 

 sturdy gi-owth as a child. Under such circumstances the animal 

 combustion must be necessarily great ; still the vital waste is more 

 than retarded by the carbon taken into the system by the draughts 

 of warm blood from recently killed animals, and by the enormous 

 amount of fatty and oily ^ood which he consumes. The continued 

 existence of the Eskimo in the Arctic regions, with a vigour exceeding 

 that of the natives of the Tropics, proves that the human species is 

 independent of temperatui-e, while the equally early development 

 of aborigines under these opposite conditions shows that we must 

 look lor its cause in something else than the climate. 



We can localize the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but as 

 Agassiz says : " Man alone is complete. His domain is the whole 

 world." Even were this not so, any application of uniformity to 

 man could only be maintained on the principle of double negation, 

 for the Eskimo contrasts with his sub-arctic brothei-, as the Mongol 

 contrasts with the sub-tropical Asiatic. 



In briefly reviewing what I have advanced upon this subject, I 

 cannot, in all deference, think it mere illusion to refer the solution 

 of a phenomenon so essentially identical in natui'e, affecting alike 

 peoples of diametrically opposed nationalities, temperaments, cus- 

 toms and associations, to other influences than the unconscious 

 opei-ation of local conditions and admit this remarkable fact of 

 precocious development, physically characteristic, as it is, of people 

 of a common descent, to be an intermediate link connecting the two 

 exti'emes, and to adapt to this higher organization the accepted apo- 

 phthegm in botany of " species keeping true in either one marked 

 particular or another, although living under most opposite climes." 



