![Transcription Center logo](/themes/custom/tc_theme/assets/image/logo.png)
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
84 of great varieties which may be incorporated into the constitutions of families, and of nations, without impairing any of the essential properties of the species. And I may here be permitted to anticipate an observation which, perhaps, would come with more force after having considered other distinctive properties which discriminate the various tribes, or races of men; but which will be of use to be borne in mind through every stage of the following illustration. If we have reason, from the varieties, in the midst of resemblance, which are often seen to exist in the same family, or the same tribe, and which are not less than those which discriminate the Danes, the [[footnote]] the body, and sometimes in the whole person, have become much more dark in their complexion; and of some who have, in that state, become absolutely black; but have returned, after they were relieved of their infant load, to the original fairness of their skin. De nos jours une parielle métamorphose s'est re-nouvellé annullement dans la personne d'une dame de distinction d'un beau teint, et d'une peau fort blanche. Dès qu'elle étoit enceinte, elle commençoit á brunir, et vers la fin de sa grossesse elle devenoit une veritable Negresse. Après ses couches la couleur noire disparoissoit peu à peu, sa premiere blancheur revenoit, et son fruit n'avoit aucune teinte de noir.-- Bomare, apud Blum. 156.---Et le Cat loc. eod.--Une pay-sanne des environs de Paris, nourrice de son métier, a regulierement le ventre tout noire à chaque grossesse, et cette couleur se dissipe par l'accouchement. [[/footnote]] 85 French, the Turks, and even nations more remote from one another, to conclude that all these people have originally sprung from one stock, and belong to the same species, have we not equal reason to conclude that the nations beyond them to the North, the East, and the South, and who do not differ from the last by more conspicuous distinctions than the last differ from the first, belong, likewise, to the same species? By pursuing this progression we shall find but one species from the equator to the poles.* The hair, and that excrescence which is analogous to it, called wool, is, in all animals, greatly affected by the temperature of the climate. Widely different is the coarse black shag of the American bear, from the fine white fur of the same animal under the extreme rigor of the climate of Greenland. The bea- [[footnote]] * Men frequently deceive themselves upon this subject by bringing together at once the most distant extremes, without patiently tracing the intermediate grades which, in every step of the progression, touch upon one another. The extremes surprize us by their dissimilarity: but, passing along the minute gradations which serve to reunite them, the mind perceives in this wide difference merely the result of the actions of the same physical laws in successive climates, or positions of the human race.
Transcription Notes:
----------
Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 11:06:33
----------
Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 14:18:05
----------
Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 17:19:15
----------
Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 17:35:41
----------
Reopened for Editing 2023-06-06 06:27:29