DIITJililvXCES OP COLOrit. 
341 
veliers who may possess a knowledge of physiology, and 
may have opportunities of examining the brown children 
of the Mexicans at the age of two years, as well as the 
white children of the Miamis, and those hordes* on the 
Orinoco, who, living in the most sultry regions, retain 
during their whole life, and in the fulness of their strength, 
the whitish skin of the Mestizoes. 
In man, the deviations from the common type of the 
whole race are apparent in the stature, the physiognomy, 
or the form of the body, rather than on the colour of the 
skin.f It is not so with animals, where varieties are found 
more in colour than in form. The hair of the mammi- 
ferous class of animals, the feathers of birds, and even the 
scales of fishes, change their hue, according to the length- 
ened influence of light and darkness, and the intensity of 
heat and cold. In man, the colouring matter seems to 
be deposited in the epidermis by the roots or the bulbs of 
the hair and all sound observations prove, that the skin 
varies in colour from the action of external stimuli on in- 
dividuals, and not hereditarily in the whole race. The Esqui- 
maux of Greenland and the Laplanders are tanned by the 
influence of the air ; but their children are born white. 
We will not decide on the changes which nature may have 
produced in a space of time exceeding all historical tra- 
dition. lleason stops short in these matters, when no 
longer under the guidance of experience and analogy. 
All white-skinned nations begin their cosmogony by white 
men ; they allege that the negroes and all tawny people 
have been blackened or embrowned by the excessive heat of 
the sun. This theory, adopted by the Greeks, § though it 
did not pass without contradiction, || has been propagated 
* These whitish tribes are the Guaycas, the Ojos, and the Maqui- 
ritares. 
t The circumpolar nations of the two continents are small and squat, 
though of races entirely different. 
$ Adverting to the interesting researches of M. Gaultier, on the 
organisation of the human skin, John Hunter observes, that in severut 
animals the coiorating of the hair is independent of that of the skin. 
§ Strabo, iiv. xv. 
II Onesicritus, apud Strabonem, lib. xv. Alexander’s expedition 
appears to have contributed greatly to fix the attention of the Greeks on 
the great question of the influence of climates. They had learned from 
