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tion and progressive debilitation, as animals, 

 in a state of domestication, pass from dark 

 to lighter colours. In plants and in animals, 

 accidental varieties, formed under our own eyes, 

 are become constant, and have been propa- 

 gated # without alteration : but nothing proves, 

 that in the present state of the human orga- 

 nization, the different races of black, yellow, 

 copper-coloured, and white men, when they 

 remain unmixed, deviate considerably from 

 their primitive type by the influence of climates, 

 of food, and other external agents. 



I shall have occasion to return to these general 

 considerations, when we shall ascend the vast 

 table-lands of the Cordilleras, which are four 

 or five times more elevated than the valley 

 of Caripe. I shall here only cite the authority 

 of Ulloa This learned man has seen the 



* For example, the sheep with very short legs, called 

 ancon sheep in Connecticut, and examined by Sir Everard 

 Home. This variety dates only from the year 1791. 



f a The Indians (Americans) are of a copper colour, 

 which by the action of the sun and the air grows darker. I 

 must remark, that neither heat nor cold produces any sen- 

 sible change in the colour, so that the Indians of the Cor- 

 dilleras of Peru are easily confounded with those of the hot- 

 test plains ; and those who live under the line cannot be 

 distinguished, by the colour, from those who inhabit the for- 

 tieth degree of north and south latitude. " Noticias Americ, 

 cap. 17, p. 307. No ancient author has so clearly stated 

 the two forms of reasoning, by which we still explain in our 



