Aristotle observeth, the deers of Arginusa had their ears divided; occasioned at first by slitting the ears of deer. Thus have the Chinese little feet, most Negroes great lips and flat noses; and thus many Spaniards, and Mediterranean inhabitants, which are of the race of Barbary Moors (although after frequent commixture), have not worn out the Camoys nose unto this day. Artificial Negroes, or Gypsies, acquire their complexion by anointing their bodies with bacon and fat substances, and so exposing them to the sun. In Guinea Moors and others, it hath been observed, that they frequently moisten their skins with fat and oily materials, to temper the irksome dryness thereof from the parching rays of the sun. Whether this practice at first had not some efficacy toward this complexion, may also be considered." Lastly, if we still be urged to particularities, and such as declare how, and when the seed of Adam did first receive this tincture; we may say that men became black in the same manner that some foxes, squirrels, lions, first turned of this complexion, whereof there are a constant sort in divers countries; that some choughs came to have red legs and bills; that crows became pied. All which mutations, however they began, depend on durable foundations; and such as may continue for ever. And if as yet we must farther define the cause and manner of this mutation, we must confess, in matters of antiquity, and such as are decided by history, if their originals and first beginnings escape a due relation, they fall into great obscurities, and such as future ages seldom reduce unto a resolution. Thus if you deduct the administration of angels, and that they dispersed the creatures into all parts after the flood, as they had congregated them into Noah's ark before, it will be no easy question to resolve, how several sorts of animals were first Flat Nose. 8 Artificial Negroes, &c.] First added in the 3rd edition. 9 some choughs, &c.] This, however, is not a parallel case to the varieties existing among different individuals of the same species. The chough and the pied crow, are distinct species.-The former (corvus gracula), has always red legs and bills; the latter (corvus caryocatactes) is always pied. dispersed into islands, and almost how any into America. How the venereal contagion began in that part of the earth, since history is silent, is not easily resolved by philosophy. For whereas it is imputed unto anthropophagy, or the eating man's flesh, that cause hath been common unto many other countries, and there have been cannibals or men-eaters in the three other parts of the world, if we credit the relations of Ptolemy, Strabo and Pliny. And thus if the favourable pen of Moses had not revealed the confusion of tongues, and positively declared their division at Babel; our disputes concerning their beginning had been without end,' and I fear we must have left the hopes of that decision unto Elias.* And if any will yet insist, and urge the question farther still upon me, I shall be enforced unto divers of the like nature, wherein perhaps I shall receive no greater satisfaction. I shall demand how the camels of Bactria came to have two bunches on their backs, whereas the camels of Arabia in all relations have but one? How oxen in some countries began and continue gibbous or bunch-backed? What way those many different shapes, colours, hairs, and natures of dogs Elias cum venerit, solvet dubium. 1 had not revealed the confusion, &c.] The question which forms the subject of this and the two following chapters, appears to me to be very much of the same class as those adverted to in the present passage: questions utterly incapable of solution, in the absence of positive information. We know the proximate cause of the different complexions existing among the blacker and tawny varieties of the human race, to be the different hues of the colouring matter contained in the rete mucosum; but as to the originating cause, we can scarcely arrive at even a probable conjecture. There have existed various opinions as to the original complexion of mankind. Not only have the Negroes deemed themselves the "fairer," describing the devil and all terrible objects as being white; but they have contended that our first progenitor was, like themselves, black. Job Ben Solomon, an African prince, when in England, was in company with Dr. Watts. The Dr. enquiring of him why he and his countrymen were black, since Adam was white? Job answered, "How you know Adam white? We think Adam black; and we ask how you came to be white? A question which it is not probable the Dr. was able to answer.' Mo. Rev. vol. xxxviii, p. 541. Mr. Payne Knight, in his work On Taste, p. 15, is of the same opinion, that Adam in Paradise was an African Black! !— Dr. Pritchard has also endeavoured to shew that all men were originally Negroes. Blumenbach on the other hand supposes the original to have been Caucasian. The influence of climate has been the most generally assigned cause of the blackness of Negroes,-by some of the greatest naturalists both in ancient and modern times; for example by Pliny, Buffon, Smith, and Blumenbach. But it is a theory which surely a careful investigation of facts will be sufficient to overthrow. In addition to our author's observations to this effect, see those of the English editors of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, vol. i, p. 174. Nor is the difficulty as to the originat came in?? How they of some countries became depilous, and without any hair at all, whereas some sorts in excess abound therewith? How the Indian hare came to have a long tail, whereas that part in others attains no higher than a scut? How the hogs of Illyria, which Aristotle speaks of, became solipedes or whole-hoofed, whereas in other parts ing cause of the varieties in the human race confined to the mere question of complexion. It extends to the variations in hair and beard-to the configuration of the head-to the character and expression of countenance-the stature and symmetry of the body-and to the still more important-differences in moral and intellectual character. But of what use is it to exercise ingenuity as to the reasons of these particular variations? We see that the most astonishing variety pervades and adorns the whole range of creation. Let us be content to resolve it into the highest cause to which we can ascend, the will of that Being who has thus surrounded himself with the glory of his own works. I subjoin some remarks by Mr. Brayley, bearing on a part of the subject. In an elaborate paper by Dr. Stark, on the influence of colour on heat and odours, published in the Phil. Trans. for 1833, are contained some observations and experiments which tend to throw considerable light upon this subject. Dr. Franklin, it is stated by the author of the paper, from the result of his experiments with coloured cloths on the absorption of heat, drew the conclusion, "that black clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot sunny climate or season as white ones, because in such clothes the body is more heated by the sun, when we walk abroad and are at the same time heated by the exercise; which double heat is apt to bring on putrid, dangerous fevers;" that soldiers and seamen in tropical climates should have a white uniform; that white hats should be generally worn in summer; and that garden walls for fruit trees would absorb more heat from being blackened. 3 from direct experiments on himself and on a Negro's skin, lays it down as evident, 'that the power of the sun's rays to scorch the skins of animals is destroyed when applied to a dark surface, although the absolute heat, in consequence of the absorption of the rays, is greater.' Sir Humphry Davy explains this fact by saying, that the radiant heat in the sun's rays is converted into sensible heat.' With all deference to the opinion of this great man, it by no means explains why the surface of the skin was kept comparatively cool. From the result of the experiments detailed, (in Dr. Stark's paper) it is evident, that if a black surface absorbs caloric in greatest quantity, it also gives it out in the same proportions and thus a circulation of heat is as it were established, calculated to promote the insensible perspiration, and to keep the body cool. This view is confirmed by the observed fact of the stronger odour exhaled by the bodies of black people."-Br. 2 what way those many, &c.] Rev. Mr. White, in his delightful Natural History of Selborne, describes a very curious breed of edible dogs from China"such as are fattened in that country for the purpose of being eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow colour, with coarse bristling hair on their backs, sharp upright ears, and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance. They bark much in a short, thick manner, like foxes; and have a surly savage demeanour, like their ancestors, which are not domesticated, but bred up in sties, where they are fed for the table with rice-meal and other farinaceous food." On the subject of canine varieties Sir W. Jardine in a note refers to some very interesting observations, in the fifth number of the Journal of Agriculture, by Mr. J. Wilson." 66 3 in other parts.] Not in all, for about Aug. 1625, at a farm 4 miles from Winchester, I beheld with wonder a great T they are bisulcous, and described cloven-hoofed, by God himself? All which, with many others, must needs seem strange unto those that hold there were but two of the unclean sort in the ark; and are forced to reduce these varieties to unknown originals. However therefore this complexion was first acquired, it is evidently maintained by generation, and by the tincture of the skin as a spermatical part traduced from father unto son; so that they which are strangers contract it not, and the natives which transmigrate, amit it not without commixture, and that after divers generations. And this affection, (if the story were true) might wonderfully be confirmed, by what Maginus and others relate of the emperor of Ethiopia, or Prester John, who, derived from Solomon, is not yet descended into the hue of his country, but remains a Mulatto, that is, of a mongrel complexion unto this day. Now although we conceive this blackness to be seminal, yet are we not of Herodotus' conceit, that their seed is black. An opinion long ago rejected by Aristotle, and since by sense and enquiry. His assertion against the historian was probable, that all seed was white; that is, without great controversy in viviparous animals, and such as have testicles, or preparing vessels, wherein it receives a manifest dealbation. And not only in them, but (for ought I know) in fishes, not abating the seed of plants; whereof at least in most, though the skin and covering be black, yet is the seed and fructifying part not so: as may be observed in the seeds of onions, piony, and basil. Most controvertible it seems in the spawn of frogs and lobsters, whereof notwithstanding at the very first the spawn is white, contracting by degrees a blackness, answerable in the one unto the colour of the shell, in the other unto the porwigle or tadpole; that is, that animal which first proceedeth from it. And thus may it also be in the generation and sperm of Negroes; that being first and in its naturals white, but upon separation of parts, accidents before invisible be come apparent; there arising a shadow or dark efflorescence in the out-side, whereby not only their legitimate and timely births, but their abortions are also dusky, before they have felt the scorch and fervor of the sun. CHAPTER XI. Of the same. A second opinion there is, that this complexion was first a curse of God derived unto them from Cham, upon whom it was inflicted for discovering the nakedness of Noah. Which notwithstanding is sooner affirmed than proved, and carried with it sundry improbabilities. For first, if we derive the curse on Cham, or in general upon his posterity, we shall denigrate a greater part of the earth than was ever so conceived, and not only paint the Ethiopians and reputed sons of Cush, but the people also of Egypt, Arabia, Assyria, and Chaldea, for by this race were these countries also peopled. And if concordantly unto Berosus, the fragment of Cato de Originibus, some things of Halicarnasseus, Macrobius, and out of them Leandro and Annius, we shall conceive of the travels of Camese or Cham, we may introduce a generation of Negroes as high as Italy, which part was never culpable of deformity, but hath produced the magnified examples of beauty. 4 A second opinion.] Possevine, in his 2 tom. and 252 page, does much applaud himself as the first inventor of this conceite. But Scaliger, in his 244 exercitation, sifting that quere of Cardan, why those that inhabite the hither side of the river Senega, in Affrick, are dwarfish and ash colour; those on the other side are tall and Negroes; rejects all arguments drawn from natural reasons of the soile, &c. and concludes that the Asanegi on this side the river formerly inhabited on both sides of it, but were driven out of their countrye into this side of the river by the black Moores, drawne thither by the richnes of the soile on the further side. And doubtles considering that the maritime Moors of Barbarye, who lye 900 miles on this side the tropicke, are blacker then those of the posteritye of Chus, in Arabia, which lyes under the tropick; wee must needs conclude that this is but a poore conceyte, not unlike many other roving phancyes wherein the Jesuit is wont to vaunt himselfe.-Wr. |