Chap. VII. 
THE EACES OF MAN. 
245 
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 with- 
stood the climate in a wonderful manner. When he 
first arrived as a boy on the coast, an old and expe- 
rienced negro chief predicted from his appearance that 
this would prove the case. Dr. Nicholson, of Antigua, 
after having attended to this subject, wrote to me that 
he did not think that dark-coloured Europeans escaped 
the yellow-fever better than those that were light- 
coloured. Mr. J. M. Harris altogether denies 49 that 
Europeans with dark hair withstand a hot climate 
better, than other men ; on the contrary, experience has 
taught him in making a selection of men for service 
on the coast of Africa, to choose those with red hair. 
As far, therefore, as these slight indications serve, there 
seems no foundation for the hypothesis, which has been 
accepted by several writers, that the colour of the black 
races may have resulted from darker and darker indi- 
viduals having survived in greater numbers, during 
their exposure to the fever-generating miasmas of their 
native countries. 
Although with our present knowledge we cannot 
account for the strongly-marked differences in colour 
between the races of man, either through correlation 
with constitutional peculiarities, or through the direct 
action of climate ; yet we must not quite ignore the 
“ be discovered, but the investigation is well worth making. In case 
any positive result were obtained, it might be of some practical 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-coloured by the better preservation of dark- 
“ haired or dark-complexioned individuals during a long succession of 
“ generations.” 
49 ‘ Anthropological Review/ Jan. 1866, p. xxi. 
