14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



direction north, south, east, or west from this central point the pro- 

 portion of blondes decreases, and that of brunettes increases. 



Many theories have been advanced to account for these anomalies. 

 The common explanation is that they are due to race. If so, how is 

 it that we have no aboriginal blondes between the tropics, and no 

 aboriginal blacks north of 35° N. L. It has been thought that 

 civilization produces fairness ; but this view is refuted by many facts, 

 the civilized Peruvian Indians, for instance, being darker than their 

 savage congeners on the Amazons. It has been asserted that the 

 upper classes are fairer than the lower ; but, though this is the case 

 in Europe and India, the opposite state of things existed in the 

 Sandwich Islands, and still exists in some parts of Africa. A moun- 

 tain climate has been supposed to produce a light complexion, but 

 the highlanders of Scotland and Switzerland are darker than the 

 natives of the plains of the same countries. Indeed, a pretty good 

 case could be made out for the theory that low, fiat countries produce 

 fair complexions. South America, for example, which has no abori- 

 ginal negroes, is much less raised above the level of the sea than 

 Africa. But neither is this theory consonant with all the facts. 



The explanation has been sought in differences of diet, and it has 

 been conjectured that a superabundance of carbon in the food might 

 lead to the deposit of some of it in the skin. Races then, that live 

 largely upon fat or oily food ought, on this hypothesis, to be darker 

 than others in the same latitude. But there are no facts to show 

 that the Welsh or the Irish live more on carbonaceous food than the 

 English or the Dutch, and yet there is a considerable difference in 

 complexion. Dr. Livingstone thought that a moist climate produces 

 dark skins ; D'Orbigny considers it the cause of fairness. Poesche, in 

 his work on the Aryans, seems to consider fairness to be due to the 

 absence from the soil of the elements from which the pigment that 

 gives the yellow, brown, or black shade to the skin is formed. 



Darwin, Professor Huxley, M. de Quatrefages and others think it 

 probable that racial distinctions owe their origin to the selective 

 operation of the prevailing diseases of particular climates. Assuming, 

 what is amply supported by facts, that individuals slightly diverging 

 in different directions from the type are constantly being produced, 

 it is obvious that if a dark or a light complexion be correlated with 

 power to resist a particular disease or group of diseases, a white race 

 may, by natural selection, be gradually developed from a coloured one, 



