ZCT. L] ALIMENT. 61 



Buraets, and many other Siberian nomadic tribes, are 

 hort and weakly through living entirely on animal food 

 Pallas) . On the other hand, the greater portion of the South 

 islanders, living almost entirely on vegetables and fish, are 

 ntellectually gifted, and many of them very warlike. 1 The 

 nost savage, and at the same time the most gifted people, the 

 'ij'i islanders, live almost entirely on vegetables, chiefly yams. 

 Fhe inhabitants of New Caledonia are large, well-proportioned, 

 md more vigorous than those of the New Hebrides. The 

 Vfohav-Indians, on the Colorado, in North America, are of 

 ithletic structure, though living exclusively on vegetable food. 2 

 From these examples, which might easily be multiplied, we 

 are not inclined to consider with Lesson (128), the vegetable 

 iiet of the inhabitants of Ualan (Micronesia) as the cause of 

 /heir effeminacy and peaceful disposition, nor to consider any 

 necessary connexion of that kind, as do Grerdy and Lucas. 3 



The capacity of thriving on any kind of sufficient alimentary 

 substances appears, besides the climatic conditions, to depend 

 on the habitude of the organism which seems to be transmitted 

 to the offspring. It may further be observed, that the Euro- 

 jean is, with regard to vegetable food, more favourably cir- 

 cumstanced than the inhabitants of other quarters of the globe, 

 in as much as proper preparation renders his vegetables more 

 nutritious and digestible than the maize of the native Ameri- 

 can, the millet of the African, and the rice of the Asiatic, 

 which, to afford the same nourishment, must be consumed in 

 arge quantities, producing a less advantageous effect on body 

 and mind. 



Further proofs of the great influence of aliment and mode of 

 life on man are furnished by the American Indians. Though 

 it is undoubted that the Indians west of the rocky mountains 

 belong to the same stock as those in the East (the Indian 

 tribes in the interior of the Oregon region resemble very much 

 those who formerly were in possession of the eastern part of 

 the United States) ; yet, both mentally and physically are they 



1 Moerenhout, " Voy. aux lies du gr. Ocean," i, p. 120, 1837. 



2 Sitgraves, in " Bullet. Soc. Geog./' i, p. 379, 1855. 



3 Loc. cit., ii, p. 474. 



