THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 91 



lower in this manner the number of human beings who are 

 worthy of this name ? Is not the best part, if there could be 

 one in the case of science, played by the polygenists, who con- 

 sider that other races are special entities, pursuing an end, 

 which is their own and not ours, and dividing with us the 

 planet, inaccessible in all its extent to the Iranian ; just 

 as certain kinds of animals, likewise, cover the globe with 

 different species ? Climate, we have said, has a decisive influ- 

 ence upon a man taken to another country ; it must only be 

 understood in the sense of this influence, and we have seen 

 that it is generally a pernicious one.* It makes itself felt in the 

 physical and moral nature of man, both deeply and superficially. 



We may point out among the most simple and the most 

 profound climateric influences, the sun-burn, the study of 

 which is so interesting in anthropological study. We know, 

 at the present day, that the sun is far from being always the 

 cause of it ; that a bivouac at night has as powerful an action 

 in the same manner, and that the north-pole explorers found 

 that their hands and faces were browned under a northern 

 sky.f 



Are these not facts which will diminish the decisive part 

 which has so long been given to solar heat in the production 

 of colouring matter in the Negro ? J The colour of sun-burn 



* Climateric influences act probably upon wild animals in the same 

 manner ; it must be remarked, however, that a captive animal and a man, 

 taken to another country, are not exposed in the same, degree to the action of 

 the new medium ; conditions are not similarly altered as regards both of 

 them. Sometimes the man, sometimes the animal, will have most chances 

 of resistance ; the one being always obliged by his master to submit to an 

 intellectual government, approaching as much as possible his former state ; 

 the other, abandoned to himself, and drawn fatally into the new habits 

 which he sees around him. 



f See, on this point, Boudin, Geographic Mtdicale, vol. ii, p. 15, Paris, 1857. 

 Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, p. 230, 1833. G. Pouchet, Des Colorations 

 de I'epiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864. 



J [Dr. Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology (translated and edited 

 by J. F. Collingwood), gives an explanation concerning the colouring matter 

 in the Negro, which is very curious, but with which, however, he does not 

 agree ; viz., " that in hot climates the amount of oxygen inspired is insufficient 

 to change the carbon into carbonic acid, and that the unconsumed carbon 



is deposited in the pigment-cells of the skin It is, however, difficult 



to admit that the browning of the skin in our climate in summer is produced 

 by the same causes as the black colour of the Negro, and that it would only 

 require a greater intensity and a longer duration to become so entirely." 

 Part. I, sect, i, p. 35. EDITOR.] 



