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semblance may be traced in the complexion of nations inhabiting the same latitudes. Both these effects, however, are greatly modified, in different countries, by various combinations of the causes already mentioned. And the latter, in particular, together with the whole human appearance, is still more diversified by the state of society in which different tribes of the human race exist, and their manner of living; 

proximity to the course of the sun, or according to their soils, their waters, their minerals, their volcanos, and a thousand other causes which affect this aerial ocean, it is not surprizing that animal bodies, constantly exposed to their action, and suffering their influences, either by absorption, at the surface of the skin, or by respiration, by which their qualities are imparted to the mass of the blood through the lungs, or the stomach, should be sensible of material changes in many respects from the variations of this atmospheric constitution.  These variations will be greatly increased, and diversified in their influence on the human body by the different proportions of light, of heat, of the electric fluid, and of many other operative and powerful principles constantly mingling themselves with the mass of the air. Although this general proposition will be easily admitted to be true, yet the respective effects on the human constitution of these fine and active principles every where blend with the atmosphere, so easily elude our observation, and are so difficult to separately ascertained, and discriminated from one another, that the present state of physical science forbids us to hope for much satisfaction from any attempt minutely to investigate them.


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the influence of which causes shall, hereafter, be more minutely examined.

Let us, in the first place, pass under review the general effects of climate upon the colour of the human skin: after which we shall take notice of the principal apparent deviations from the common law exhibited in various portions of the earth.

The power of climate to change the complexion is demonstrated by facts which constantly occur to our observation. In the summer season we perceive that the intensity of the sun's rays in our climate tends to darken the colour of the skin, especially in the labouring poor who are more constantly than others, exposed to their action. In the winter, on the other hand, the cold and keen winds which then prevail contribute to chafe the countenance, and to excite in it a sanguine and ruddy complexion. In the temperate zone, the causes of these alternate and opposite effects serve, in a degree, to correct one another. But in proportion as heat or cold predominates in any climate, it tends to impress a permanent and characteristic complexion. The degree in which the one or the other prevails over its opposite may be considered as a constant and uniform cause to the action of which the constitution is exposed.

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