Interesting facts.
An prominent Frenchman, M. Boudin, has published some interesting facts on ‘"Man's Power of Adaptation to Different Climates."’ --The writer protests against that prevalent notion of man's being able to adapt himself to all cliæates and to take up his abode in all parts of the earth.
He contends that all history shows the folly, not to say the wickedness, of man's endeavors to set aside the natural laws which rest on climatic influences and the difference of races.
From the earliest times the Europeans have failed, says M. Boudin, in all their attempts at acquiring a permanent hold on the land of
Egypt, where, also, the negroes and Monalukes are known to be incapable of procreation beyond the third generation.
Other facts are mentioned, illustrating the same position.
In Corsca, the
Italian termination of family names proves, of itself, the inability of the
French to establish their stock in that island.
Where, in the
North of
Africa, are the descendants of the Romans and the Vandals ? Insanity makes frightful progress in the negro population of
North America, in proportion as it is removed from the zone where the white race are unable to cultivate the soil.
Thus, the proportion of insane negroes which, in
Louisiana is 1 in 4,310, amounts in
South Carolina to 1 in 2,477; in
Virginia, to 1 in 1,299; in
Massachusetts, to 1 in 43; in
Maine, to 1 in 14.
The height above the ocean which gives protection to the life of a European in hot climates, becomes fatal to the negro.
M. Boudin refers to the fact that, in the earliest times, despotism made use of exile into countries alien to their nature for the destruction of different people.
With this view, after the destruction of
Jerusalem, a great number of Jews was sent to
Sardinia, on the occasion of whose exile the heathen
Tacitus makes a reflection which the
Northern Christians have indulged towards their own friends, whom they have sent to invade the
South: ‘"Even if they should fall victims to a murderous climate, the loss would not be very great."’ After the war of the Morea, Mehemet Ali, wishing to get clear of the undisciplined
Arnouts, sent them to the shores of the
Red Sea, where, in a few years, eighteen thousand men were reduced to four thousand, by the mere influence of the climate.
The deaths among the Africans of New York are twice as numerous as those of the whites in the same city.
In the
West India Islands the number of the black population is progressively decreasing, and this in a very remarkable degree.
The deaths are most numerous among the adult males, being nearly double those of the females.
The disease from which the greatest mortality arises is, strange to say, pulmonary consumption.
The cause is conjectured by some to be the want of adequate (particularly of animal) nutriment.
In the island of
St. Domingo, the garden spot of the
Western Hemisphere, great want often prevails among the population on the seaboard. --In the vital statistics of New York, facts similar to those in the
West Indies have been noticed.
It is computed that, at the rate of diminution — a tenth part of the population every four years--a tenth part of the population every four years--the negro population will have almost ceased to exist in the
British West Indie colonies before the termination of another century.
