﻿438 Canadian Record of Science. 



those who have made a special study of the effects of that 

 climate on the human constitution — is that, though white 

 men, if they take due precautions, may live and do certain 

 kinds of work in tropical Africa, it will never be possible 

 to colonize that part of the world with people from 

 the temperate zone. This is the lesson taught by genera- 

 tions of experience of Europeans in India. 



So far, also, sad experience has shown that white 

 people cannot hope to settle in Central Africa as they 

 have settled in Canada and the United States and in 

 Australia, and make it a nursery and a home for new 

 generations. Even in such favorable situations as 

 Blantyre, a lofty region on the south of Lake Nyasa, 

 children cannot be reared beyond a certain age ; they 

 must be sent home to England, otherwise they will 

 degenerate physically and morally. No country can ever 

 become the true home of a people if the children have to 

 be sent away to be reared. Still, it is true our experience 

 in Africa is limited. It has been maintained that it 

 might be possible to adapt Europeans to tropical Africa by 

 a gradual process of migration : Transplant southern 

 Europeans to North Africa ; after a generation or two 

 remove their progeny further south, and so on, edging the 

 succeeding generation further and further into the heart 

 of the continent. The experiment — a long one it would 

 be — might be tried ; but it is to be feared that the 

 ultimate result would be a race deprived of all those 

 characteristics which have made Europe what it is. 



HIDDEN ENEMIES. 



An able young Italian physician, Dr. Sambon, has 

 recently faced this important problem, and has not hesi- 

 tated to come to conclusions quite opposed to those 

 generally accepted. His position is that it has taken us 

 centuries in Europe to discover our hidden enemies, the 

 microbes of the various diseases to which northern 



