is probable, they derive their origin. In stature they are tall; the features of their countenance are strongly marked; their eyes are large and beautiful; their nose is well proportioned; their lips are thin; and their teeth are white. Of the inhabitants of Nubia, on the contrary, the nose is flat, the lips are thick and prominent, and the countenance is exceedingly black. These Nubians, as well as the Barbarians, their western neighbors, are a species of negroes, not unlike those of Senegal.

The first negroes we meet with, are those who live on the south side of Senegal. These people, as well as those who occupy the different territories between Senegal and Gambia, are called Jalofes. They are all very black, well proportioned, and of a size sufficiently tall. Their features are less harsh than those of the other negroes; and some of them there are, especially among the female sex, whose features are far from irregular. Among them, to be perfectly beautiful the color must be exceedingly black, and exceedingly glossy: their skin, however, is highly delicate and soft; and color alone excepted, we find among them women as handsome as in any other country in the world. They are usually very gay, lively, and

amorous.

Father du Tertre says expressly, that, if the negroes are for the most part flat-nosed, it is because the parents crush the noses of their children; that in the same manner they compress their lips, in order to render them thicker; and that of the few who have undergone neither of these operations, the features of the countenance are as comely, the nose is as prominent, and the lips are as delicate as those of the Europeans. It appears, however, that among the negroes in general, thick lips and a nose broad and flat, are gifts from nature, by which was originally introduced, and at length established, their custom of flattening the nose and thickening the lips of such as at their birth discovered a deficiency in these ornaments. Though the negroes of Guinea are in general very healthy, yet they seldom attain what we term old age.

The negroes in general are a remarkably innocent and inoffensive people. If properly fed, and unexposed to bad usage, they are contented, joyous and obliging; and on their very countenances may we read the satisfaction of their souls. If hardly dealt with, on the other hand, their spirits forsake them, and they droop with sorrow.

Mr Kolben, though he has given so minute a description of the HOTTENTOTS, is strongly of opinion, however, that they are negroes. Like that of the latter, he assures us, that their hair is short, black, frizzled, and woolly; nor in a single instance did he ever observe it long.

Though of all the Hottentots, the nose is very flat, and very broad, yet it would not be of that form, did not their mothers, considering a prominent nose as a deformity, think it a duty incumbent upon them to crush it presently after their birth. Their lips are also thick, and their upper lip is particularly so; their teeth are very white; their eyebrows are thick; their

head is large; their body is meagre; their limbs are slender. They seldom live longer than forty years; and of this short duration of life, the causes doubtless are, their being so fond of filth, and residing continually in the midst of it; as also their living upon meat which is tainted or corrupted, of which indeed their nourishment chiefly consists. We might dwell longer upon the description of this nasty people; but as most travellers have given very large accounts of them, to their writings we refer. One fact, however, related by Tavernier, we ought not to pass in silence. The Dutch, he says, once took a Hottentot girl, soon after her birth; and after bringing her up among themselves, she became as white as an European. From this circumstance he presumes, that all the Hottentots would be of a tolerable whiteness, were it not for their custom of perpetually begriming themselves.

Though in AMERICA, we observe less variety in the human form than might be expected in so extremely extensive a continent, it cannot yet be supposed, but that, in such a diversity of climates and situations, a considerable diversity of inhabitants must also be found.

In beginning our inquiries, then, we find in the most northern parts of America, a species of Laplanders, similar to those of Europe, or to the Samoyedes of Asia; and though, in comparison to the latter, they are few in number, yet they are diffused over a considerable extent of ground. Those who inhabit the land of Davis' Strait are of a diminutive size, of an olive complexion, and their legs are short and thick. They are skilful fishers; they eat their fish and their meat raw; their drink consists of pure water, or of the blood of the dog-fish; they are, moreover, very strong, and generally live to a great age. Here we see the figure, the color, and the manners of the Laplanders; and, what is truly singular is, that, as among the Laplanders of Europe, we meet with the Finlanders, who are white, comely, tall, and tolerably well made; so, in like manner, among the Laplanders of America, we meet with another species of men, tall, well made, tolerably white, and with features exceedingly regular.

Of a different race from the former, seem to be the savages of Hudson's Bay, and northward of the land of Labrador: they are, however, ugly, diminutive, and unshapely; their visage is almost entirely covered with hair, like the savages of the country of Yesso, northward of Japan. In summer they dwell under tents made of skins of the rein-deer; in winter they live under ground, like the Laplanders and the Samoyedes, and, like them, sleep together promiscuously, and without the smallest distinction. They likewise live to a great age, though they feed on nothing but raw meat and fish. The savages of Newfoundland have a considerable resemblance to those of Davis' Strait; they are low in stature; they have little or no beard; their visage is broad and flat; their eyes are large; they are generally rather flat-nosed; and, upon the whole, arc far from being unlike the savages of the northern continent, and of the environs of Greenland.

Besides these savages, who are scattered over the most northern parts of America, we find others more numerous, and altogether different, in Canada, and in the vast extent of land to the Arctic sea. These are all tolerably tall, robust, vigorous, and well made; they have hair and eyes black, teeth very white, a complexion tawny, their beard scanty, and over the whole of their body hardly a vestige of hair; they are hardy, indefatigable walkers, and very nimble runners. They are alike unaffected by excesses of hunger, and of repletion; they are by nature bold and fierce, grave and sedate. So strongly, indeed, do they resemble the Oriental Tartars in the color of the skin, the hair, and the eyes, in the scantiness of beard, and of hair, as also in disposition and in manners, that, were they not separated from each other by an immense sea, we should conclude them to be descended from that nation. In point of latitude, their situation is also the same; and this still farther proves how powerfully the climate influences not only the color, but the figure of men.

If, however, in the whole of North America, there were none but savages to be met with, in Mexico, and in Peru, there were found nations polished, subjected to laws, governed by kings, industrious, acquainted with the arts, and not destitute of religion.

In the present state of these countries, so intermixed are the inhabitants of Mexico and New Spain, that hardly do we meet with two visages of the same color. In the city of Mexico, there are white men from Europe, Indians from the north, and from the south of America, and negroes from Africa, &c., insomuch, that the color of the people exhibits every different shade which can subsist between black and white. The real natives of the country are of a very brown olive color, well made and active; and though they have little hair, even upon their eyebrows, yet upon their head their hair is long and very black.

In surveying the different appearances which the human form assumes in the different regions of the earth, the most striking circumstance is that of color. This circumstance has been attributed to various causes; but experience justifies us in affirming, that of this the principal cause is the heat of the climate. When this heat is excessive, as at Senegal and in Guinea, the inhabitants are entirely black; when it is rather less violent, as on the eastern coasts of Africa, they are of a lighter shade; when it begins to be somewhat more temperate, as in Barbary, in India, in Arabia, &c., they are only brown; and, in fine, when it is altogether temperate, as in Europe, and in Asia, they are white; and the varieties which are there remarked, proceed solely from varieties in the mode of living. All the Tartars, for example, are tawny, while the Europeans, who live in the same latitude, are white. Of this difference the reasons seem to be, that the former are always exposed to the air; that they have no towns, no fixed habitations; that they sleep upon the earth, and in every respect live coarsely and savagely. These circumstances alone, are sufficient to render

them less white than the Europeans, to whom nothing is wanting which may render life comfortable and agreeable. Why are the Chinese whiter than the Tartars, whom they resemble in all their features? It is because they live in towns, because they are civilized, because they are provided with every expedient for defending themselves from the injuries of the weather, to which the Tartars are perpetually exposed.

When cold becomes extreme, however, it produces some effects similar to those of excessive heat. The Samoyedes, the Laplanders, the Greenlanders, are very tawny; and it is even asserted, as we have already observed, that, among the Greenlanders, there are men as black as those of Africa. Here we see two extremes ineet: violent cold and violent heat produce the same effect upon the skin, because these two causes act by one quality, which they possess in common. Dryness is this quality; and it is a quality of which intense cold is equally productive as intense heat; so by the former, as well as by the latter, the skin may be dried up, altered, and rendered as tawny as we find it among the Laplanders. Cold compresses, shrivels, and reduces within a narrow compass, all the productions of nature; and thus it is, that we find the Laplanders, who are perpetually exposed to all the rigors of the most piercing cold, the most diminutive of the human species.

The most temperate climate is between the degrees of forty and fifty. There we behold the human form in its greatest perfection; and there we ought to form our ideas of the real and natural color of man. Situated under this zone, the civilized countries are, Georgia, Circassia, the Ukraine, European Turkey, Hungary, South Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, the north of Spain, and the northern part of the United States of America; of all which the inhabitants are the most beautiful, and the most shapely, in the world.

As the first, and almost the sole cause of the color of mankind, we ought therefore to consider the climate; and though upon the skin the effects of nourishment are trifling, when compared with those of the air and soil, yet upon the form they are prodigious. Food which is gross, unwholesome, or badly prepared, has a strong and a natural tendency to produce a degeneracy in the human species; and in all countries where the people fare wretchedly, they also look wretchedly, and are uglier and more deformed than their neighbors. Even among ourselves, the inhabitants of country places are less handsome than the inhabitants of towns; and we have often remarked, that in one village, where poverty and distress were less prevalent than in another village of the vicinity, the people of the former were, at the same time, in person more shapely, and in visage less deformed.

The air and the soil have also great influence, not only on the form of men, but on that of animals, and of vegetables. Let us, after examining the peasants who live on hilly grounds, and those who live embosomed in the neighboring valleys, compare them together, and we shall find that the

former are active, nimble, well shaped, and lively; the women commonly handsome; that, on the contrary, in the latter, in proportion as the air, food, and water are gross, the inhabitants are clumsy, and less active and vigorous.

From every circumstance, therefore, we may obtain a proof, that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other; that, on the contrary, there was originally but one individual species of men, which, after being multiplied and diffused over the whole surface of the earth, underwent divers changes, from the influence of the climate, from the difference of food, and of the mode of living, from epidemical distempers, as also from the intermixture, varied ad infinitum, of individuals more or less resembling each other.

Of ACCIDENTAL VARIETIES IN THE HUMAN SPECIES. Besides those great varieties proceeding from general causes, which have just been noticed, says Buffon, and which serve as marks of distinction to the nations of the earth, there are others, which affect only individuals, which appear casual and often unfortunate deviations from the general standard. The Blafards, or WHITE NEGROES, (if this expression may be admitted,) are among the first of these extraordinary deviations which attract our attention. They are found occasionally in all parts of the East Indies, at Madagascar, in Africa, at Carthagena, and most parts of South America. They are a weak, imbecile class of human beings, and are in general barren. The negresses at Carthagena and Panama, more frequently than any others, are known to produce Blafards; and it is to be observed, that the climate there is more debilitating to the human frame. "Those of Darien," says a modern traveller, "have so marked a resemblance to the white negroes of Africa, that we cannot but assign them the same origin. Their color is dead white, like that of paper or muslin, and without the least appearance of red on any part of the surface of the body. They are born white, and their skin never darkens. In Africa their hair is white and woolly, like that of the genuine negroes; and in Asia it is long, and as white as snow, or reddish inclining to yellow. Their eyebrows and eyelashes resemble the skin of the eiderduck, or rather the soft down which is about the throat of a swan. The iris is sometimes of a pale blue, and sometimes of a lively yellow inclining to reddish. They are in general remarkably feeble and low of stature." A white negress, of the name of Genevieve, was born of black parents in the island of Dominica, in the year 1759. Her father and mother were brought from the Gold Coast in Africa, and were perfectly black. Genevieve was white in every part of her body. She was about four feet eleven inches high, and her body was well proportioned. Every feature was completely correspondent to those of the negroes. The lips and the mouth, however, though perfectly formed like those of other negroes, had a singular appearance for want of color; they were as white as the rest of her skin, with no appearance of red. Her skin in general was of a tallow color; when she