nations has offered to the terrible climate they are confronting. The experiment is, at present, only begun. Nevertheless M. Walther has already obtained some interesting data at Guadeloupe. The mean annual mortality of the Creoles is 3.28 per 100; that of immigrants, 9'66 for the Chinese; 7.68 for Negroes; 7·12 for Hindoos; and 5·80 for the natives of Madeira. Unfortunately, the statistics are doubtful, and differ from those which M. Du Hailly has given for Martinique. They must, however, both be recorded as the starting-point for new study. There is, moreover, no cause for despair. It is clear, for example, that the natives of Madeira will very quickly become acclimatised in Guadeloupe, as is already the case in Cuba, and the much more serious mortality of the Negro, Chinese, and Hindoo races does not prove the impossibility of their ever inhabiting these islands.

VII. The conditions of life and the nature of the race are not all in the numerous problems raised by acclimatisation. Man, even individually, brings his special elements to bear upon it. The savage and the modern European are placed, by the mere fact of the social differences which separate them, in conditions often opposite, and not always in favour of the latter.

Even the marvels of modern industry, whilst facilitating immigration into distant lands, make it more dangerous. Railways and steamers have reduced the longest journeys to a mere nothing. Lands, which it took our ancestors centuries to people, distances which our own fathers could only travel over in several months, are accomplished by us in a few days. We have here, then, yet another to be added to the many difficulties of acclimatisation. It is a common thing in Paris to hear men complain of the effects of a mere journey from Algiers. The rapidity of the transit gives a shock to the organisation, although tending to replace it under its natural conditions of life. The shock is necessarily greater when the journey is made in the other direction, and we go against our physical habits, instead of returning to

them. And, when after a few days' voyage, instead of Algiers, we land at Rio de Janeiro or the Antilles, the shock must be great indeed.

Modern civilisation is also answerable to a great extent for the losses involved by every settlement in a climate differing too widely from our own. By reason of the security with which she surrounds the poor as well as the rich, of the at least relative ease which is enjoyed by all classes of society, we are little prepared for the struggle for existence. Without going so far back as primitive man or the Aryans, let us simply call to mind Balbao, Pizarro, Cortez, Soto, Monbars, and their rough companions; can the present generation offer such a resistance as theirs?

It is not, however, by its luxuries only that civilisation renders us unfit to confront the chances of acclimatisation. It is also, and principally, by the vices which too often accompany it. M. Bolot, who was in charge of a number of men employed for the construction of a pier at Grand Bassam, said to Captain Vallon: "A Sunday will put more of my men in the hospital, than three days of work in the full heat of the sun." This was because Sunday was given up to debauchery.

Here, again, is a fact forming, so to speak, an experiment such as might have been imagined by a physiologist. The Isle of Bourbon passes for one of those disastrous climates to which the European cannot become acclimatised. The tables of mortality which relate to the whole population do, in fact, show that the deaths exceed the births to a formidable extent. This is, however, another of those sweeping results, into which we must inquire if we wish to understand its true meaning.

The Whites of Bourbon form, in reality, two classes, or rather two races, distinct in their manners and customs. The former includes the population of towns and large settlements, who lead the ordinary life of colonists, and especially avoid agricultural labour, considered by Creoles as degrading as well as fatal. The latter includes the Mean

Whites, descendants of the original colonists, who, too poor to buy slaves, were forced to cultivate the land with their own hands.

Now, of these two classes of colonists, it is the former alone which supply the mortality to which attention is so often drawn. The Mean Whites live as their fathers lived; they inhabit and cultivate the less fertile districts of the island. Far from having deteriorated, their race has improved, and the women, in particular, are remarkable for beauty of form and feature. The race maintains itself perfectly, and seems to be on the increase. Crossing, moreover, has no influence in the matter, for the Mean White, proud of the purity of blood which constitutes his nobility, will not, at any price, ally himself with the Negro or Coolie.

Thus at Bourbon, indolence, and the habits which it involves, destroy the rich, and those who try to imitate them, while the poor become acclimatised through sobriety, purity of manners, and a moderate amount of work. From the latter, anthropologists and all the world may learn a lesson of grave importance, at once scientific and moral.

VIII. Finally, acclimatisation and naturalisation are as universal in history as migration, of which they are the consequence. We see them daily accomplished under our very eyes, and with the most different races, though almost invariably at the price of human life. In many places, they are purchased very cheaply, so much so, that study alone teaches us that new conditions of life in no case entirely lose their rights. In others, specially in countries characterised by an extreme climate, they involve considerable losses. But there is nothing to authorise us to deny the existence of acclimatisation and naturalisation. Everything, on the contrary, proves that if they are willing to submit to the necessary sacrifices, all human races may live and prosper in almost every climate which is not vitiated by accidental

causes.

IX. In this case, as in many others, the present explains the past, which also contributes its share of information.

Relying upon our own daily experience, and upon facts borrowed from history, we can form a general idea of the manner in which the world has been peopled.

The history of the Aryan race alone, gives us, so to speak, that of the whole species. We see it starting from the Bolor, and Hindoo Koh, from the Eeriéné Veedjo, where the summer only lasted two months, descending into Bokhara, and overrunning Persia and Cabul before reaching the basin of the Indus. Eleven stations mark this route followed by the Aryans before reaching the Ganges. We there find them again slowly advancing, though all the time sending forth as a vanguard, those pious heroes, who slew the Rakchassas, and prepared the way for conquests. The race is now in the tropics in India, in the Polar circle in Greenland, where the Norwegians and Danes have replaced the Sea-Kings; it spreads over an immense region of more or less temperate climate, and possesses colonies in every part of the world.

The human species must have made a beginning like the Aryans. Upon leaving their centre of creation, it was by slow stages, that the primitive colonists, ancestors of all existing races, marched forth to the conquest of the uninhabited world. They thus accustomed themselves to the different conditions of existence imposed upon them by the north, the south, the east, or the west, cold or heat, plain or mountain. Diverging in every direction, and meeting with different conditions of life, they gradually established a harmony between themselves and each one of them. Thus acclimatisation, advancing at the same rate as geographical conquest, was less fatal. The struggle, however, though mitigated indeed by the slowness of the advance, still existed, and many pioneers must have fallen upon the route. But the survivors had only nature to face, and, therefore, succeeded, and peopled the world.

BOOK VII.

PRIMITIVE MAN.-FORMATION OF THE HUMAN

RACES.

CHAPTER XXL

PRIMITIVE MAN.

I. THE primitive type of the human species must necessarily have been effaced, and have disappeared. The enforced migrations, and the actions of climate, must of themselves have produced this result. Man has passed through two geological epochs; perhaps his centre of appearance is no longer in existence; at any rate, the conditions are very different to those prevailing when humanity began its existence. When everything was changing round him, man could not avoid being changed also. Crossing, also, has certainly played its part in this transformation. I shall shortly return to these different points which I only allude to here.

But, on the other hand, we shall see that the skull of the most ancient Quaternary race is repeated not only in some Australian tribes, but in Europe, and in men who have played an important part among their fellow-countrymen. The other races of the same epoch, judging from the skull, have many representatives amongst us. They have, nevertheless, passed through one of the two geological revolutions, which separates us from our original stock. It is then not impossible that the latter may have transmitted to a certain