258 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



between complexioD and a tendency to consumption, tlie 

 conjecture seemed to me not improbable. Consequently I 

 endeavored, with but little success," to ascertain how far 

 it holds good. The late Dr. Daniell, who had long lived 

 on the West Coast of Africa, told me that he did not believe 

 in any such relation. He was himself unusually fair, and 

 had withstood the climate in a wonderful manner. When 

 lie first arrived as a boy on the coast, an old and experi- 

 enced negro chief predicted from his appearance that this 

 would prove the case. Dr. Nicholson, of Antigua, after 

 having attended to this subject, writes to me that he does 

 not think that dark-colored Europeans escape the yellow 

 fever more than those that are light-colored. Mr. J. M. 

 .Harris altogether denies that Europeans with dark hair 

 'withstand a hot climate better than other men: on the 

 contrary, experience has taught him, in making a selec- 

 tion of men for service on the coast of Africa, to choose 

 those with red hair." As far, therefore, as these slight 



*' In the spring of 1862 I obtained permission from the Director-General of 

 the Medical Department of the Army to transmit to the surgeons of the varioua 

 regiments on foreign service a blank table, with the following appended re- 

 marks, but I have received no returns. "As several well-marked cases have 

 been recorded with our domestic animals of a relation between the color of the 

 dermal appendages and the constitution, and it being notorious that there is 

 some limited degree of relation between the color of the races of man and the 

 climate inhabited by them, the following investigation seems worth considera- 

 tion: Namely, whether there is any relation in Europeans between the color 

 of their hair and their liability to the diseases of tropical countries. If the 

 surgeons of the several regiments, when stationed in unhealthy tropical dis- 

 tricts, would be so good as first to count, as a standard of comparison, how 

 many men, in the force whence the sick are drawn, have dark and light- colored 

 hair, and hair of intermediate or doubtful tints; and if a similar account were 

 kept by the same medical gentlemen, of all the men who suffered from malarious 

 and yellow fevers, or from dysentery, it would soon be apparent, after some 

 thousand cases had been tabulated, whether there exists any relation between 

 the color of the hair and constitutional liability to tropical diseases. Perhaps 

 no such relation would be discovered, but the investigation is well worth 

 making. In case any positive results were obtained, it might be of some prac- 

 tical use in selecting men for any particular service. Theoretically the result . 

 would be of high interest, as indicating one means by which a race of men 

 inhabiting from a remote period an unhealthy tropical climate, might have 

 become dark-colored by the better preservation of dark-haired or dark-com- 

 plexioned individuals during a long succession of generations." 



^' "Anthropological Review," Jan. 1866, p. xxi. Dr. Sharpe also says, 

 with respect to India ("Man a Special Creation," 181S, p. 118), that "it has 



