THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 87 



to explain fully either tlie prominent jaw-bone in the Negro, 

 the cheek-bone in the Kalmuc, or the obliquity of the eyes 

 in the Chinese and the Malay, etc. We can declare the same 

 about all the other peculiarities of the same order, the flat- 

 tening of the nose, the crisped state of the hair, the colouring 

 matter which we find even in the arch of the palate in the 

 Negro, etc. 



We owe a very good observation to Camper : {{ The black 

 colourwhich is noticed in the natural parts of both sexes, and even 

 in white individuals, clearly proves that our reticular membrane 

 has its colour only from the blood."* This fact alone should 

 have long ago given a more rational impulse to researches on 

 this subject. If putting all these hypotheses on one side, for 

 all that we can bring forward has no other value if we wish 

 to study in a positive manner the influence of the sky upon 

 man, we have only in reality one resource, it is to shut our- 

 selves up in the limits of history, to study the effect of the 

 migrations of which it tells us, and to see whether man, trans- 

 ported far away, does become modified, and how this modifica- 

 tion takes place. Then we shall find two answers to these 

 questions, which form together a kind of anthropological law. 



LAW. In historical times, either man (we mean a society of 

 men) who is taken far from his medium does not alter his type^ 

 or lie entirely disappears. 



What nation has been transformed? We cannot answer, 

 even with history in our hand ; we know not of any. And yet, 

 the short period of time embraced by the records of mankind 

 would be quite sufficient if it were true, as Isidore Geoffrey 

 thought, that we could conclude from animals to men, and that 

 two thousand years would have been sufficient to alter funda- 

 mentally the genus stag.f It is a well-known fact, that the 

 inhabitants of the Island of Bourbon, who were colonists esta- 

 blished in the high lands for two centuries, have preserved 

 intact the purity of their blood. J The Spanish and Portuguese 



* Dissertation Physique sur les Differences des Traits du Visage, p. 17. 

 f See above, p. 85. 



$ Yvan, De France en Chine, p. 175, Paris, 1853. [" M. Perier lias men- 

 tioned, according to Yvan, the beauty of the inhabitants of the island of 



