28 
« In the. woods of Florida,” he remarks, “ there are a great many pigs ; and 
it is a curious thing that they are all black, every one of them. Professor 
Wyman was there some years ago ; and on noticing no pigs but these black 
ones, he asked some of the people how it was that they had no white pigs. 
The reply was, that in the woods of Florida there was a root which they 
called the Paint Eoot ; and that if the white pigs were to eat any of it, it 
had the effect of making their hoofs crack, and they died ; but if the black 
pigs eat any of it, it did not hurt them at all. 
54. In this manner, therefore, it is clear that Nature herself 
becomes capable of supplying certain parts of the animal 
creation with a principle of selective breeding a principle 
which, if applied to the primeval settlers in Negro lands (pro- 
viding only that the first company which arrived there had 
brought this congenital family variety along with them), would 
quite as truly and scientifically account for the exclusive per- 
petuation of a black-skinned race, as if it had been purposely 
and artificially brought about by man himself through the 
principle of methodical selection. 
55. If any one should ask me to fix the probable area 
within which the first black settlement, thus supposed to have 
originated, actually took root and became a primary centre 
for Negro dispersion, I should select the district of the "W hite 
Nile, to the south of Senaar, in which place the Negroes even 
now speak a language that retains an evidence of Semitic 
parentage.* Other considerations strengthen this idea. 1st. 
That spot would be just such an one, in its geographical 
aspect, as ancient Egypt must have required for keeping up 
her supply of negro slaves, the river Nile furnishing an 
obvious and easy course for their trausit to the north. 2nd. 
It would be naturally more in the line of man’s original migra- 
tion from the north-east angle of Africa than the western 
ranges of Senegambia and Guinea. 3rd. The peopling of 
those western parts of Negro-land from the eastern side of 
the continent, is much more probable than the reverse method, 
inasmuch as even now there is a tendency among some tribes 
to be on the constant move from east to west. It is common 
enough, says one traveller, to see Mandingoes inhabiting the 
low lands of Senegambia; and the light-coloured Fans are 
beginning to occupy the banks of the Gaboon. f 4th. By sup- 
posing the first appearance of this abnormal Negro variety 
to have been in the spot just indicated, and the gradual 
extension of it to have been westward in the direction of 
Lake Tchad, good ground is given us to account for the 
* Dr. Latham. Also Latham’s Man and his Migrations, pp. 140 and 148. 
f Reade’s Savage Africa, p. 512. 
