therefore, too cool, as well as too much agitated by winds, to permit, ordinarily, the existence of animalcules.'-vol. i. p. 346. Another opinion of the doctor's is that wheat is injured by dressing the land with animal manure; vegetation,' he says, 'is forced by it, so that the vessels burst and produce what is called the blast; or, if the season be stormy, the crop lodges by reason of its own weight.' The same effect, he shews, is not produced by other dressings which are less stimulant. A notion akin to this has been advanced in this country, that artificial pastures being thus forced are less nutritious than natural ones; and that the animals which are raised upon them are consequently of a laxer fibre, and the flesh less wholesome as well as less savoury : hence the superiority of heath or mountain mutton to the improved breeds, and of wild meats in general to tame. Dr. Dwight mentions a peculiar breed of sheep called, from some resemblance in their form, the Otter breed;-it is the only instance wherein man, for his own advantage, has availed himself of a defect in nature. An ewe in New England brought forth twins, thick and clumsy in body, with the fore legs remarkably short and bent inward, so as distantly to resemble what are called club-feet.' They were male and female, and the owner observing that they were not disposed to wander, and unable to leap the stone inclosures, raised a breed from them, which has increased to many thousands. In cases where the breed has been crossed, the lambs have in every instance, according to his information, entirely resembled either the sire or the dam, never exhibiting the least discernible mixture. As neither the wool nor the flesh is inferior to that of ordinary sheep, their quietness and inactivity must render them peculiarly valuable in any country where it is no part of the sheep owner's system that his flock should get their own livelihood in their neighbour's inclosures. A physiological change in the human species fell under the author's immediate observation, which is of considerable interest as bearing immediately upon a very important question. Dr. Dwight saw a negro, Henry Moss by name, a native of Virginia, whose complexion, without any apparent cause, or the slightest diminution of his general health, was gradually becoming white, and that not of a leprous or cadaverous tint, but of a fresh and healthy hue. According to the man's own account the change was first perceived under and round the roots of his finger nails, and proceeded faster on those parts where the skin was covered than where it was exposed. In the course of four years the breast, arms, legs, and thighs had become wholly white; the hands, feet, and face were hideously spotted, the skin of the head also was changed in spots, and wherever it was changed the hair had had become straight and flaxen. In four years more the change was almost complete. From the beginning he had been a hale, sound man, and no change had taken place in his habits of life; nor was he conscious of any peculiar sensation except that, where the discolouration was going on, it was just perceptible that the skin was more sensitive than in other parts. The same process had taken place to the same extent in one civilized Indian, and had commenced in three others. From hence Dr. Dwight fairly infers that 'the varieties observed in the complexion and hair of the human species furnish no probable argument that they sprang from different original stocks. A black man in one instance, and a red man in another, have become almost entirely white, and without any such change in the internal parts of the constitution as to occasion a single new sensation of any consequence. The ordinary course of Providence, operating agreeably to natural and established laws, has wrought the change here. A similar course of Providence is therefore justly concluded to have wrought the change from white to red and to black, or, what is perhaps more probable, from red to white on the one hand, and from red to black on the other.' It appears elsewhere that the author is disposed to admit the old interpretation of the word Adam, as signifying red earth, and he has probably allowed some weight to it in this part of his reasoning. He notices that the Colchians, who were black in the time of Herodotus, are now as white as the people of Europe: the question must be asked whether they are the same people? or whether a black tribe has not been exterminated by a nation of white conquerors? A good cause is injured by adducing a weak argument for it. It is more to the point when he observes that the Jews have every tint of complexion, from that of Poland, Germany, and England to that of the black Jews of Hindostan. The same thing might perhaps be said of the Portugueze, were it not that, in their African possessions, a mixture of blood is so general, that it must always be suspected. The most important illustration which he adduces is from direct personal observation. The change of the blacks,' he says, 'whose ancestors were introduced into New England, is already very great as to their shape, features, hair, and complexion; within the last thirty years I have not seen a single person of African descent who was not many shades whiter than the blacks formerly imported directly from Guinea.' After he himself had thus distinctly perceived the effect of local circumstances upon the organization of man, Dr. Dwight ought not to have felt such indignation at a remark in this Journal,* that those circumstances had produced a trace of savage character both in * Vol. ii. p. 311. the the physical and intellectual features of the Americans. That indignation would have been spared if he had understood the word savage in the meaning wherein it is there used, as equivalent to Indian. With all the infinite and marvellous varieties of individual expression, there is nevertheless a national countenance, produced not merely by moral causes which we can trace, but also by physical ones, the operations of which are inscrutable. Every one knows how different the Scotch physiognomy is from the English, the Spanish from the Italian, the French from the Flemish. Our meaning was that, in America, as the wild, hardy, and lawless habits of the back settlers and pioneers of civilization induce a resemblance to the worst part of the Indian character; other causes less tangible, but not less certain, impress upon the American countenance the same cast as that of the original inhabitants. And any one who looks at the portrait of Washington may see an example of this so striking, that it has frequently been observed. This is a subject upon which Humboldt could bring the stores of science and history and philosophy to bear, with a power of mind and a range of intellect peculiar to himself. Dr. Dwight's volumes, however, derive much value from his unpretending fidelity; it gives his testimony that weight which the evidence of an honest and sensible man must always carry with it. With regard to the effects produced upon the animal economy by climate and other obscurer causes, we may be permitted to add some recollections to what he has noticed. A remarkable instance is mentioned by Mr. Turnbull, if he has not been deceived by false information, or betrayed into error by generaliz ing upon a few cases. He says that the children of European parents at Botany Bay are invariably of one complexion, fair, and with white hair. Out of eleven hundred children born in New South Wales, there is scarcely a single exception to this national distinction, as we may call it. Their eyes are usually black and very brilliant, their disposition quick and volatile, and their loquacity such as might render them a proverb.' very much the character of the Creole children in our sugar islands; and yet the climate of New South Wales is very different from that of the West Indies, and all the circumstances are still more so. This is In these cases the effect was immediate, showing itself in the first generation. The type of the moral physiognomy is changed as soon. No two national characters can be more distinct and unlike than those of the Scotch and Irish, though both nations spring from the same stock. But the Irish children of Scotch parents assume the character of their mother-country even more more surely than they acquire its accent: and of the descendants of the English settlers in Ireland, it was said in Queen Elizabeth's days, that they were Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores. Whatever indeed, whether it be evil or good, is grafted upon the English stock, partakes of its strength. There are other modifications of the animal system which, whether they depend upon the changes produced on the climate itself, or upon other latent causes, are more slowly brought about. Such are the changes of colour in domesticated animals, and of complexion in the human species. Some of the South American savages used to practise a cruel art upon birds, by which they varied their plumage, exchanging one splendid colour for another. It is said that they could produce yellow, green, or purple feathers; yellow in place of green was most easily produced, but in the place of yellow they never could substitute another hue. The manner in which this was done we shall not explain, lest it should fall into the hands of any one unfeeling enough to try the experiment. The colour of certain flowers may also be changed with the same certainty by circumstances of soil and culture; here the cause is understood, but the manner in which it operates is as yet unexplained, and as we ascend to animal life the cause itself becomes inexplicable. Peter Heylyn says that Cæsar may be thought rather to have prophesied in his Commentaries the character of the present French, than described one of the ancient Gauls, for a Frenchman is nothing but an old Gaul moulded into a new name.' And he endeavours to explain, by the powerful influence of the heavens,' how it is that the Gauls, being in a manner all worn out, should have yet most of their conditions surviving in those men which now inhabit that region, being of so many several countries and originals.' But though the land has stamped upon the mind of its inhabitants through all ages the same indelible type, their physical characteristics are no longer those which were described by ancient writers. A similar change has taken place in our own country. It is certain that not only the earliest possessors of these islands, but all the various nations who have settled upon it by right of conquest, were of light complexion, with blue or grey eyes, and red or flaxen hair, the Romans alone excepted, and possibly also a colony from Spain:possibly, we say, because the existence of such a colony is rather probable than certain, and it is as likely to have been Keltic as Iberian. That the Romans left little of their blood in the land when they withdrew from it, being no longer able to maintain their dominion here, appears from many circumstances: the Romanized, that is to say, the civilized part of the population, were either driven out or destroyed, and it is plain that few of their posterity posterity remained, because few vestiges of their language are found either in the speech of the Saxon or of the Briton. It may therefore fairly be affirmed, that the ancestors of the British nation were all of Keltic or Teutonic race, both belonging to the same family of nations, and both of the same physical characteristics; and yet at this time dark hair and dark complexions, which belong to neither, predominate among us in a very great degree. Dr. Dwight has perplexed himself with a needless difficulty, concerning the formation of water-spouts on land. Misled by the word, he supposes that a water-spout on land, like oue at sea, is always formed upon the surface of some piece of water; and finding no water near enough to explain one which he describes upon the White Mountain, pronounces that few events in the natural world were more extraordinary. Had he heard it called by its good old English north-country name, a burst, he would have been at no loss to perceive the real nature of the phenomenon. A cloud attracted to the side of a mountain in some manner, which it is for chemists and electricians to explain, discharges its waters at once, instead of letting them fall in rain. This occurs frequently in the mountains of Cumberland and Westmorland, where we have seen much more considerable effects than those which Dr. Dwight describes. The name water-spout, however, has not been applied to it without some cause; the appearance and motion of the cloud bearing some resemblance to what is observed at sea. We happened to see one burst upon Helvellin, at the distance of about eight miles; a sort of arm or spout, shaped like a funnel, descended from the bottom of the cloud, and was twice or thrice retracted, before it appeared to touch the side of the mountain, when the whole cloud fell. It is evident, from the instances which Dr. Dwight mentions, that these bursts are as frequent in North America as in the mountainous parts of England. If they depend upon electricity, we might expect them to be more so, because the electric fluid is more frequently collected in the atmosphere there, and more abundantly than in Europe. When I first saw thunder-storms in Philadelphia,' says Volney, I remarked that the electric fluid was so copious, as to make all the air appear on fire, by the continued succession of the flashes: their arrowy and zigzag lines were of a breadth and length of which I had no idea; and the pulsations of the electric fluid were so strong, that they seemed to my ear and to my face to be the light wind produced by the flight of some nocturnal bird.' In the course of three months he counted, in the American newspapers, seventeen deaths by lightning, and Bache, in the same time, reckoned eighty severe accidents; casualties which are certainly ten times more than occur from |