FIRST ORDINARY MEETING. 15 



■or vice versa. M. de Quatrefages has suggested that the malarial fevers 

 of Africa have wrought this effect there, and that phthisis has been 

 the agent in the north of Europe. It certainly is the case that the 

 tropical regions of Africa are very unhealthy for whites, and that the 

 Negro dies out north of the parallel of 40° in both hemispheres; but 

 this does not show that both races might not be acclimatized by slow 

 degrees without loss of colour. In other words, no reason has been 

 shown for thinking that it is to the complexion, and not to some 

 other racial peculiarity that the relative immunity from cei'tain mala- 

 dies is due. 



Of these various views, I am inclined to hold that that of 

 D'Orbigny and Schomburgh is most in accordance with the facts. 

 Europe which is the seat of the white man is the moistest of the 

 continents ; the fairest of North American Indians live on the humid 

 coast and islands of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia ; 

 where there are unbroken forest regions in South America, and there- 

 fore a comparatively moist climate, the aborigines are yellow ; 

 where prairies and droughts prevail, they are brown. As compared 

 with Hindostan, Farther India is moist, and its inhabitants are less 

 sombre in hue. The brown men of Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and 

 Celebes inhabit forest-covered, and therefore comparatively humid 

 islands, the black races of Papua and Australia roam over grass-clad 

 plains, whose existence proves the relative dryness of the air. But 

 neither is this hypothesis in accord with all the facts. The co exist- 

 ence of races of different hues in India, and of the brown Malays, 

 and black Negritos in the Philippines and Malacca, cannot be ex- 

 plained by it. The west coast of Great Britain is incomparably the 

 damper, but yet the inhabitants of the east are decidedly the fairer. 



Some portion of these, and similar facts, may be explained by sup- 

 posing that certain introduced races have not become completely accli- 

 matized. It might, for example, be held that this is the cause of the 

 relative fairness of the higher castes in India. It might too, be held 

 that if many thousands of years were allowed, the blonde inhabitants 

 of Great Britain and Ireland would disappear, and be replaced by a 

 homogeneous race of dark whites, similar to the pre-Celtic inhabitants 

 of those islands. There is some evidence tending to support this 

 view. In particular, I may mention Dr. Beddoe's observations on 

 the colour of the eyes of women, from which it appears that the 

 proportion of dark-eyed women in England is growing lai'ger. 



