Extinction, of Organic Beings. 475 



Assuredly not ; the supposition is refuted by actual experi- 

 ence to the contrary. Again, does an African diet, or a 

 change of costume, create any change in their form, or their 

 mental perceptions ? Are their natural characteristics, in 

 short, in any degree lost so long as their race is preserved 

 pure ? Let the Spaniards settled for more than two centu- 

 ries among the copper coloured Indians of Mexico and New 

 Spain, — the Dutch Boors of Southern Africa, — the descen- 

 dants of the whites who first settled in the West Indies, — 

 above all the Jews, now scattered " among every nation under 

 heaven :" — let these, we repeat, tacitly reply to these ques- 

 tions. Such living testimonies, known to all, should at once 

 have dispelled the illusion which many writers, and some of 

 them able ones, have indulged in, — that temperature, food, 

 clothing, and other secondary influences were the chief causes 

 of that extraordinary variation in the aspect of the human 

 species which the different nations of the earth exhibit, and 

 which, so long as each race is preserved pure, is unchanging, 

 and unchanged. Upon such a subject the modest and ingenu- 

 ous mind may indulge conjecture ; but when we attempt to 

 penetrate the darkness of primitive ages, and pretend to trace 

 the first causes of such things, we wander in regions from 

 which human knowledge is excluded. HE alone, that great 

 First Cause, "by whom all things were made," that are made, 

 " is alone master of this impenetrable secret."* 



To the insect tribes this theory of change by food and cli- 

 mate, is still less applicable, since we know that larvae of 

 many species will feed on one plant alone, and when that 

 fails them they must perish, so that climate alone must be 

 the cause of change in them. We see however from the 

 examples above given, that climate alone is not sufficient 

 to effect this change, and therefore we are forced to con- 

 clude that genera and species have not diffused themselves 



* Geography of Animals by Swainson, Lardner's Cyclopaedia, p. 23. 



