

92 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 



does not even seem to remain in the layers of the epidermis, 

 in which the normal colour is found. Indeed, we must re- 

 member, that it is always easy to distinguish a sun-burnt 

 nation, since individuals who, for some reason or other, are but 

 seldom exposed to external influences, like the women, are 

 infinitely whiter ; children are quite white when born, but as 

 soon as they go much into the air, they become brown. 



Unfortunately, the action of climate upon a man taken from 

 his own country is not merely a case of sun-burn. And me- 

 dical statistics have shown, in treating on the different races 

 of mankind, the dangers of changing one's position on the 

 surface of the globe, even if it takes place in the sense of 

 isothermal lines. We find from the results of careful inquiries 

 made in the English colonies at the Antilles for about forty 

 years, that the black population is continually diminishing, the 

 number of deaths being to that of births : : 28 : 24. Under 

 the tropics, northern organisations are much disquieted, life 

 changes its aspect, and its course is much more rapid. The 

 glandular system governs ;* man becomes " more sensible to 

 pleasure, and less disposed to activity ;"f hi g mind loses its 

 vivacity. Those noble faculties, which have made the white 

 man the monarch of creation, become weakened, and that espe- 

 cially in some colonies where government is obliged to entrust 

 everything to Europeans. J Dr. Barnard Davis lately an- 

 nounced to the Paris Anthropological Society, that one of his 

 friends, Dr. J. A. Wise, after thirty years residence "in India, 

 had never been able, after numerous inquiries, to find any 

 descendants of a European in the third generation. 



Our temperate regions are to the Negro what the tropical 

 zone is to the European. Even at Gibraltar, || the Negro 



* The precociousness of the genital functions is in direct relation with 

 this general fact. 



f W. Edwards, Caracteres Physiologiques, etc., p. 14. " The tropics alone 

 produce the combination of infantine grace with the full development of 

 female maturity." Smith, Natural History, etc., p. 190. See, also, Cabanis, 



Rapports du Physique et du Moral, vol. ii; and Davy, Account of Ceylon. 

 These two authors in particular have quite appreciated these changes. 



J Boudin, Geographic Medicate, vol. ii, p. 150, 1857. 



Meeting of November 7, 1861. 



|| [See above, p. 59, note. EDITOR.] 



