Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/104

Rh 88 ACCLIMATISATION without acclimatisation, we must adopt some such plan as the following : 1. We must transport as large a number as possible of adult healthy individuals to some intermediate station, and increase them as much as possible for some years. Favourable variations of constitution will soon show them selves, and these should be carefully selected to breed from, the tender and unhealthy individuals being rigidly elimi nated. 2. As soon as the stock has been kept a sufficient time to pass through all the ordinary extremes of climate, a number of the hardiest may be removed to the more remote station, and the same process gone through, giving protection if necessary while the stock is being increased, but as soon as a large number of healthy individuals are produced, sub jecting them to all the vicissitudes of the climate. It can hardly be doubted that in most cases this plan would succeed. It has been recommended by Mr Darwin, and at one of the early meetings of the Societe Zoologique d Acclim- atisation, at Paris, M. Geoffrey St Hilaire insisted that it was the only method by which acclimatisation was possible. But in looking through the long series of volumes of Keports published by this Society, there is no sign that any systematic attempt at acclimatisation has even once been made. A number of foreign animals have been introduced, and more or less domesticated, and some useful exotics have been culti vated for the purpose of testing their applicability to French agriculture or horticulture ; but neither in the case of animals nor of plants has there been any systematic effort to modify the constitution of the species, by breeding largely and selecting the favourable variations that appeared. Take the case of the Eucalyptus globulus as an example. This is a Tasmanian gum-tree of very rapid growth and great beauty, which will thrive in the extreme south of France. In the Bulletin of the Society a large number of attempts to introduce this tree into general cultivation in other parts of France are recorded in detail, with the failure of almost all of them. But no precautions such as those above indicated appear to have been taken in any of these experiments ; and we have no intimation that either the Society or any of its members are making systematic efforts to acclimatise the tree. The first step would be, to obtain seed from healthy trees growing in the coldest climate and at the greatest altitude in its native country, sowing these very largely, and in a variety of soils and situations, in a part of France where the climate is some what but not much more extreme. It is almost a certainty that a number of trees would be found to be quite hardy. As soon as these produced seed, it should be sown in the same district and farther north in a climate a little more severe. After an exceptionally cold season, seed should be collected from the trees that suffered least, and should be sown in various districts all over France. By such a process there can be hardly any doubt that the tree would be thoroughly acclimatised in any part of France, and in many other countries of central Europe ; and more good would be effected by one well-directed effort of this kind than by hundreds of experiments with individual animals and plants, which only serve to show us which are the species that do not require to be acclimatised. Acclimatisation of Man. On this subject we have, un fortunately, very little direct or accurate information. The general laws of heredity and variation have been proved to apply to man as well as to animals and plants ; and nume rous facts in the distribution of races show that man must, in remote ages at least, have been capable of constitutional adaptation to climate. If the human race constitutes a single species, then the mere fact that man now inhabits eveiy region, and is in each case constitutionally adapted to the climate, proves that acclimatisation has occurred. But we have the same phenomenon in single varieties of man, such as the American, which inhabits alike the frozen wastes of Hudson s Bay and Terra del Fuego, and the hottest regions of the tropics, the low equatorial valleys and the lofty plateaux of the Andes. No doubt a sudden transference to an extreme climate is often prejudicial to man, as it is to most animals and plants ; but there is every reason to believe that, if the migration occurs step by step, man can be acclimatised to almost any part of the earth s surface in comparatively few generations. Some eminent writers have denied this. Sir Ranald Martin, from a consideration of the effects of the climate of India on Europeans and their offspring, believes that there is no such thing as acclimatisation. Dr Hunt, in a report to the British Association in 1861, argues that &quot;time is no agent,&quot; and &quot; if there is no sign of acclimatisation in one generation, there is no such process.&quot; But he entirely ignores the effect of favourable variations, as well as the direct in fluence of climate acting on the organisation from infancy. Professor Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology, adduces many examples of the comparatively rapid con stitutional adaptation of man to new climatic conditions. Negroes, for example, who have been for three or four generations acclimatised in North America, on returning to Africa become subject to the same local diseases as other unacclimatised individuals. He well remarks, that the debility and sickening of Europeans in many tropical countries are wrongly ascribed to the climate, but are rather the consequences of indolence, sensual gratification, and an irregular mode of life. Thus the English, who cannot give up animal food and spirituous liquors, are less able to sustain the heat of the tropics than the more sober Spaniards and Portuguese. The excessive mortality of European troops in India, and the delicacy of the children of European parents, do not affect the real question of acclimatisation under proper conditions. They only show that acclimatisation is in most cases necessary, not that it cannot take place. The best examples of partial or com plete acclimatisation are to be found where European races have permanently settled in the tropics, and have maintained themselves for several generations. There are, however, two sources of inaccuracy to be guarded against, and these are made the most of by the writers above referred to, and are supposed altogether to invalidate results which are otherwise opposed to their views. In the first place, we have the possibility of a mixture of native blood having occurred ; in the second, there have almost always been a succession of immigrants from the parent country, who continually intermingle with the families of the early settlers. It is maintained that one or other of these mixtures is absolutely necessary to enable Europeans to continue long to flourish in the tropics. There are, however, certain cases in which the sources of error above mentioned are reduced to a minimum, and cannot seriously affect the results ; such as those of the Jews, the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Moluccas, and the Spaniards in South America. The Jews are a good example of acclimatisation, because they have been established for many centuries in climates very different from that of their native land ; they keep themselves almost wholly free from intermixture with the people around them ; and they are often so populous in a country that the intermixture with Jewish immigrants from other lands cannot seriously affect the local purity of the race. They have, for instance, attained a population of near two millions in such severe climates as Poland and Russia ; and according to Mr Brace (Races of the Old World, p. 185), &quot; their increase in Sweden is said to be greater than that of the Christian population ; in the towns of Algeria they are the only race able to maintain its numbers ; and in