40 Transactions.— Miscellaneous, 
that carbonic acid (Cos), the principal food of plants, cannot be decomposed 
under a lower temperature than 2,500° Fah.; but plants, by the aid of sun- 
light, easily decompose and utilize it, and to plant-life the presence of 
abundant light rays is absolutely indispensable; or, as Fiske eloquently 
expresses it, ** The slower undulations penetrating the soil set in motion the 
atoms of the rootlet, and enable them to shake hydrogen atoms out of 
equilibrium with the oxygen atoms which cluster about them in the com- 
pound molecules of the water. The swifter undulations are arrested by the 
leaves, where they communicate their motor energy to the atoms of chloro- 
phyll, and thus enable them to dislodge adjacent atoms of carbon from the 
carbonic acid in which they are suspended." These changes, so poetically 
described, are greater in New Zealand than in England, and in the internal 
economy of each individual certain similar charfges obtain. The increased 
heat causes a diminution in the quantity of carbonic acid excreted by each 
human individual. Vierordt proved that every rise in temperature of 10° 
Fah. caused the individual to exhale two cubic inches less per minute. Ac- 
cording to this scale, the Englishman who at home would exerete eight 
ounces of carbon in 24 hours by his lungs, would in New Zealand exhale 
only about seven ounces ;—this means that the man in New Zealand would 
eat less, and would do less work, than when at home. 
A popular belief asserts that men can adapt themselves to any climate, 
and can flourish there. This belief is wrong. It is true that the genus homo 
can endure a cold in Siberia of 109? Fah., or 190? Fah. (i.e., 150° of frost), 
or, in a Persian desert, a heat of 179° Fah., a difference of 300° ; but varieties, 
or species, of man will not bear transplanting to markedly opposite climates. 
The Esquimaux and the Fantees would soon die if they changed places. A 
scanty remnant of the original colony might survive the change for a few 
years, but the majority would soon perish; and probably, after one or two 
generations at most, the race would become extinct. Even with less 
extremes similar results obtain: Englishmen in India, Sierra Leone, and in 
Guiana die fast, and but for a constant stream of immigration would, in 
two or three generations, become extinct. So, too, the Dutch in Java are 
all immigrants from Holland. The climate of New York is fatal to the 
tropical bred negro. 
Of course, the climate of New Zealand is nothing like as hot as in some 
of these countries, yet the greater intensity and directness of the solar rays, 
as compared with those in Great Britain, does produce certain marked 
changes. Experiments very numerous, and conducted on large numbers of 
persons, prove that all our functions are carried on more quickly in summer 
than in winter; men and animals gain weight in spring and summer, and 
lose it in autumn and winter; the hair, too, grows more quickly in summer 
