72 PHYSICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART I. 



It is, besides, well known that Negroes born in America fetch 

 higher prices than those newly imported, a fact which speaks 

 plainly in favour of the superiority of the first. Such differ- 

 ences of mental capacities cannot be entirely unaccompanied 

 by external changes, there being such a parallelism between 

 physical and psychical life, that no great change can take place 

 in the latter without re-acting upon the former, and giving it 

 expression. Though such physical changes may not be de- 

 monstrated to any extent in the Negroes of America, it must 

 be taken into consideration that it required a constant new im- 

 portation of African Negroes to supply the slave population, 

 and that comparatively there are but a small number of slaves 

 whose ancestors have lived for many generations in America. 

 The cases in which the latter circumstance exists belong mostly 

 to the South of the United States, West Indies, and South 

 America ; as statistics have shown that Negroes thrive less in 

 the New England states, though it may be going too far to 

 maintain that climatic conditions render it impossible for them 

 to perpetuate themselves in that quarter. 



D'Orbigny 1 maintains that the type of the Negroes born in 

 America is easily distinguished from that of the newly im- 

 ported in whom it is more pronounced. Lyell (second journey) 

 learned from many physicians in the slave states of North 

 America, that the Negroes who had much intercourse with 

 Europeans (independent of sexual intercourse), approach them 

 gradually in shape of skull and form of body (in the course of 

 several generations), and connects this with Dr. Hancock's 

 observation, that even among the Negroes of Gruinea a greater 

 mental cultivation changed in course of time the general 

 physiognomical expression, that the lower jaw and the shape 

 of skull became modified. That such a difference is ob- 

 served between the domestic and the plantation slaves (the 

 latter preserving their original type), has already been observed 

 by Prichard, who quotes Wisemann to that effect. Supported 

 by such cases Ward 2 asserts that the Negroes in the course of 

 200 or 300 years had in some parts of America, without inter- 



1 Loc. cit., p. 143. 2 Natural hist, of mankind/' p. 157, 1849. 



