SECT. IV.] INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 205 



into another, usually fails, it is still merely a hazardous asser- 

 tion that Europeans cannot thrive in any country where the 

 Negro prospers. It is equally rash to maintain that a gradual 

 acclimatization of a white people, which from century to cen- 

 tury progresses from north to south, into a negro region is 

 impossible. The strictness with which Knox 1 defends the 

 differences of races by climate is inadmissible ; he goes so far 

 as to maintain that all immigrants into a foreign climate can 

 only be preserved by a constant infusion of fresh blood from 

 their native country. We hear, however, nothing of a rapid 

 extinction of the Creoles in the tropical colonies, as might be 

 expected if this theory had any foundation. The limitation of 

 animals to certain climates, which was invoked as an analogy, 

 is not so general as to be applied to man, for most domestic 

 animals can thrive in nearly all climates, though they do not 

 attain in them the same size and vigour. The fox lives in the 

 cold north as well as in the hot south ; the home of the tiger 

 extends from India to Siberia. Man seems, indeed, in his 

 transitions from one climate to another, to resemble domestic 

 animals, with this difference, that he bears these changes better 

 in proportion as he is civilized. As in foreign climates races 

 of animals degenerate, approaching the type of the native ani- 

 mals, even without intermixture ; 2 so does man, unless essential 

 differences in nutriment, mode of life, and cultivation of the 

 immigrants, from that of the natives, prevent it. 



As a race of animals cannot long maintain itself in a foreign 

 climate against the native race without constant infusion of 

 fresh blood from the parent stock, but is absorbed by it be- 

 cause the mass of intermixing elements finally decides the 

 type of the mongrels, and climate gradually produces the re- 

 semblance of the foreign tribe to the native, so a small number 

 of foreign immigrants remains without influence upon the type 

 of the mongrels, whilst a sufficiently large number influences 

 the type of the progeny. 



The second point, the resemblance of the Negro to the 

 ape, is a fact which is estimated differently according to the 



1 " The races of man." 



2 Lucas, ii, p. 311 . 



