Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/19

Rh show that the natives of this peninsula are fairer than the rest of the Chinese.

If this theory be correct, it is the destiny of the white race in North America to approximate in color to the aborigines. Two causes at present, to a considerable extent, counteract the effects of climate. The first is the constant influx of immigrants from the Old World; the second, the fact that, until the great West is filled up, the struggle for existence can not become very severe, and the degree of cutaneous adaptation to climate can not assume great importance. But there are, nevertheless, indications that climatic influences are producing their natural effect. The unmixed descendants of the original settlers everywhere appear to have dark hair and a more or less sallow complexion. The writer can testify from personal observation that this is generally the case with the descendants of the united empire loyalists who settled after the Revolution in what is now the Province of Ontario. He can also testify to the darkness of the French Canadians, who derive their origin principally from Normandy, and therefore may be assumed to have at first included a large number of fair-complexioned individuals. It is remarkable that among this race a great many persons are to be seen whose features are more or less Indian in type. This, however, may (as Dr. Wilson, of University College, Toronto, supposes) be the result of an admixture of native blood.

However similar, physically, our descendants may, under the influence of climate, become to the Indians, it by no means follows that they will resemble them mentally or morally. The same struggle for existence that will eliminate the individuals ill adapted to the physical climate will also eliminate those ill adapted to the intellectual and spiritual climate, so that I am inclined to predict that the result will show, what history has indeed already established, that capacity for progress is not indissolubly connected with any particular hue.

It is obvious that on this hypothesis agreement in color does not prove, and disagreement does not disprove, community of origin. Guided by linguistic affinities, ethnologists have already in many cases disregarded color in their classifications. In the Indo-European family they include both the fair Teutons and the dark Hindoos. The white Finns and Magyars are classed with the yellow Ural-Altaic races. Black Arabs and white Jews go together in the Semitic group. But the principle has not been applied throughout. The Basques and the Caucasians, between whose languages and those of the Aryan family no relationship has ever been established, are generally considered to be nearer in blood to us than those members of the Ural-Altaic group who exemplify in the fullest degree the Indo-European type of physique. Hitherto the ethnological results of investigations into the physical characteristics of different races have been mainly negative;