XVIII.

Have the European races advanced in these latitudes in strength of mind and body with equal ratio as the black man? We think not. Let us consider.

The qualities of plants and vegetables are often affected by external influences, so as to assume different characters, and the impressions upon the leaves and the fruits are distinctly marked. These alterations, degenerations, and modifications may disguise the primitive type so far that it is no longer recognizable. We observe these properties among all organic bodies, among those of the animal and as well as of the vegetable world. The vine and its golden extracts are very much dependent upon these influences.

The exquisite bouquet, the soul-inspiring qualities of the best varieties of wine, cannot be acquired by the efforts of man at pleasure; without the generous nature of the soil, the rays of sunlight, and the inspiring breezes of favored localities and climes, the extract of the pressed grape is without that flavor and force which warm into life the brilliancy of the imagination, the nobility of the soul.

There is also a marked effect of soil and climate upon the odor of plants, and in their narcotic constituents. Does not the same law affect man?

The Italian violets grow sweeter as we climb the Alpine slopes; the mignonette blooms with greater perfection and perfume as we approach the shores of the lowlands of the Mediterranean. We find the finest types of the human race among the uplands and the mountains; below, on the low coasts and river margins, where pestilences are generated, the physical and mental forces do not fully expand, and we find there neither liberty, virtue, nor science.

Dr. Rusdorf, in his work on the influence of European climate, regards the temperate zone as the brain-making region, and attempts to prove it by physiological deductions. The brain of the Caucasian, he says, determines the superiority over the other races, and it is the standard of the organism. This, he maintains, is produced by the richness of albumen in the blood, which is also dependent upon the oxygen of pure air. The extensive observations of the English Registrar-General show indisputably that the elevation of the soil exercises as decided an influence on the English race as it does on the native races of other climes and soils. They also show that the finest animals are raised in the healthiest districts. We see that certain heights above the plains are remarkably exempt from maladies which devastate nations inhabiting lower levels. Cholera, remittent fever, yellow fever, and plague, disappear at well-defined degrees of elevation.

At Vera Cruz, and along its latitude, the yellow fever vanishes at the height of three thousand feet above the Gulf shores.

The Prussian, in his "Medicinische Geographie," appears to indicate with great degree of certainty the limits and altitudes of the three zones, into which he classifies the catarrhal, the dysenteric, and the scrofulous diseases. The scrofulous zone ceases at an altitude of two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and here, he says, there is no pulmonary consumption, scrofula, cancer, or typhus fever. "It is," says Babinet, "the climate of each country which permits or arrests the development of the human race, which, joined with the industry of populations, imposes limits to the numerical force of each meteorological district, and which subsists four million of men in fertile Belgium, which is no more than a small fraction of the territory of France, whilst Siberia can with difficulty nourish a part of that number with an extent which is twenty-six times that of France." "All over the world, physical circumstances," exclaims Draper, "control the human race."