and there both animals and vegetables abound. In a cold climate, animals are in plenty, but few vegetables that can serve for food to man. What physicians pronounce upon that head, I know not; but, if we dare venture a conjecture from analogy, animal food will be found the most wholesome for fuch as are fitted by nature. to live in a cold climate.

M. Buffon, from the rule, That animals which can procreate together, and whofe progeny can also procreate, are of one fpecies, concludes, that all men are of one race or fpecies; and endeavours to fupport that favourite opinion, by afcribing to the climate, to food, or to other accidental caufes, all the varieties that are found among men. But is he feriously of opinion, that any operation of climate, or of other accidental caufe, can account for the copper colour and finooth chin univerfal among the Americans, the prominence of the pudenda univerfal among Hottentot women, or the black nipple no lefs univerfal among female Samoides? The thick fogs of the island St Thomas may relax the fibres of the natives, but cannot make them more

rigid than they are naturally. Whence, then, the difference with respect to rigidity of fibres between them and Europeans, but from original nature? Can one hope for belief in afcribing to climate the low ftature of the Efquimaux, the fmallness of their feet, or the overgrown fize of their head; or in afcribing to climate the low ftature of the Laplanders *, and their ugly vifage. Lapland is indeed piercingly cold; but fo is Finland, and the northern parts of Norway, the inhabitants of which are tall, comely, and well proportioned. The black colour of negroes, thick lips, flat nofe, crifped woolly hair, and rank fmell, diftinguifh them from every other race of men. The Abyffinians, on the contrary, are tall and well made, their complexion a brown olive, features well proportioned, eyes large, and of a sparkling black, lips thin, a nofe rather high than flat. There is no fuch difference of climate between Abyffinia and Negroland. as to produce thefe ftriking differences. At

By late accounts, it appears that the Laplanders are originally Huns. Pere Hel, an Hungarian, made lately this discovery, when fent to Lapland for making aftronomical obfervations.

VOL. I.

D.

any

any rate, there must be a confiderable mixture both of foil and climate in these extenfive regions; and yet not the leaft mixture is perceived in the people.

If the climate have any commanding influence, it must be difplayed upon the complexion chiefly; and in that article, accordingly, our author exults. fays he, "white in Europe, black in Afri

"Man,

ca, yellow in Afia, and red in America, "is ftill the fame animal, tinged only "with the colour of the climate. Where "the heat is exceffive, as in Guinea and

Senegal, the people are perfectly black; "where lefs exceffive, as in Abyffinia, the "people are lefs black; where it is more 66 temperate, as in Barbary and in Ara"bia, they are brown; and where mild,

66

as in Europe and Leffer Afia, they are "fair (a)." But here he triumphs without a victory: he is forced to acknowledge, that the Samoides, Laplanders, and Greenlanders, are of a fallow complexion; for which he has the following falvo, that the extremities of heat and of cold produce nearly the fame effects on the fkin.

(a) Book 5.

But

But he is totally filent upon a fact that alone overturns his whole fyftem of colour, viz. that all Americans, without exception, are of a copper colour, though in that vaft continent there is every variety of climate. The fouthern Chinese are white, though in the neighbourhood of the torrid zone; and women of fashion in the ifland Otaheite, who cover themselves from the fun, have the European complexion. Neither doth the black colour of fome Africans, nor the brown colour of others, correfpond to the climate. The people of the defert of Zaara, commonly termed Lower Ethiopia, though expofed to the vertical rays of the fun in a burning fand yielding not in heat even to Guinea, are of a tawny colour, far from being jet-black like negroes. The natives of Monomotapa are perfe&ly black, with crifped wooly hair, though the fouthern parts of that extenfive kingdom are in a temperate climate. And the Caffres, even thofe who live near the Cape of Good Hope, are the fame fort of people. The heat of Abyffinia approacheth nearer to that of Guinea; and yet, as mentioned above, the inhabitants are not black. Nor will our author's ingenious obfervation concerning

D 2

concerning the extremities of heat and cold account for the fallow complexion of the Samoides, Laplanders, and Greenlanders. The Finlanders and northern Norwegians live in a climate no lefs cold that that of the people mentioned, and yet are fair beyond other Europeans. I fay more, there are many inftances of races of people preferving their original colour in climates very different from their own; and not a fingle inftance of the contrary, as far as I can learn. There have been four complete generations of negroes in Pennsylvania, without any vifible change of colour: they continue jet-black as originally. The Moors in Hindoftan retain their natural colour, though tranfplanted there more than three centuries ago. And the Mogul family continue white, like their ancestors the Tartars, though they have reigned in Hindoftan above four centuries. Shaw, in his travels through Barbary, mentions a people inhabiting the mountains of Aurefs, bordering upon Algiers on the fouth, who appeared to be of a different race from the Moors. Their complexion, far from fwarthy, is fair and ruddy; and their hair a deep yellow, in

ftead