Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/867

Rh from climate as a single cause in this part of the world, then, can neither be affirmed nor denied, from utter lack of evidence.

On the contrary, a number of examples of continued fertility might be given. Brace affirms the Jews to be fertile even in Cochin-China, and Joest says that Europeans in Africa often bear children. The Spanish women in Guayaquil, on the authority of Dr. Spruce, in a climate where the temperature is seldom below 83° F., and in the complete absence of intermarriage with the natives, are the finest along the coast; and the white population is exceedingly prolific The experience of Algeria, so far at least as heat is concerned, seems to bear out the same conclusion, the birth-rate being higher even than in France. De Quatrefages, despite his inference of a temporary infertility, certainly takes a hopeful view for the other French colonies. Some remarkable examples of fecundity, indeed, are not lacking. Some years ago, an English woman, never out of India, not even taking a vacation in the hills, died at the age of ninety-seven, leaving eighteen children. Tilt, however, denies that the English in general can ever become acclimated there. Sterility, of course, while most important, is not the only element in the acclimatization of the race. Even if we could affirm that sterility did not result, the perpetuation of a people in the tropics would not necessarily follow; for the mother may seldom survive childbirth, as in the East Indies and on the Zambesi, or the children may seldom survive, the age of six being often a critical period. But these facts have no connection with sterility or the reverse, although they may produce the same negative result in the end. The final word upon this subject awaits more carefully sifted evidence than any we now possess.

—The future political destiny of Africa is not unlikely to be dominated by a remarkable fact—namely, the severe handicap against which the Teutonic stock, and especially the Anglo-Saxon branch, struggles in the attempt permanently to colonize the tropics. And