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shortness of their necks, are referable likewise to the effects of extreme cold.  Severe frost, especially where men are exposed to its action without adequate defences, almost involuntarily prompts them to raise their shoulders in order to protect the neck, and cherish its warmth. And when this cause acts with that constancy and uniformity which prevails in the frigid zone of Asia, it naturally produces a fixed habit of body. It resembles in its effects those artificial constrictions which are sometimes applied to the persons of children to alter the figure, attitude, or movements of particular limbs. In like manner those habits of the person which naturally result from the general temperature of the atmosphere, become fixed in time, and unchangeably incorporated with other peculiarities of the climate. Hence the Tartar neck must ever be short, not only because it suffers a proportional contraction with other parts of the system from the influence of cold, but, because the head and shoulders being increased in size and the latter, particularly, being elevated above their natural position, necessarily encroach upon its length. And so much are they raised in many instances as entirely to conceal the neck, and

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to give the head an appearance of resting upon them for its support.

That these peculiarities are purely the effect of climatical influence* is confirmed by the change which has passed upon the descendents of those Chinese families who have removed into that region of Tartary, to the North of the great wall, which is subject to the Chinese empire. In no very long pe-.

*Climate, and even certain temporary constitutions of the atmosphere, are known peculiarly to affect particular parts of the human system. This is visible in many epidemic disorders, as in quinzies, peripneumonies, catarrhs, and in those diseases which are in a great measure confined to particular districts of a country, as the goitiers among the Alps, and a disease very similar in its appearance, which is frequently found in the vicinity of Pittsburg in the state of Pennsylvania. If temporary constitutions of the atmosphere are found to give diseases a determination to certain parts of the system rather than to others, should it be strange that the habitual state of a climate, or of the atmosphere in particular countries, should affect some parts of the body more than others, so as to increase or diminish their size, or alter their figure? Certain medicines are likewise known to have a determination to one part of the body rather than another. But in the atmosphere are found the elements of all medicinal agents, existing in different proportions at various times. We might then, from analogy, have recourse, if it were necessary, which it is not, to some unknown atmospheric constitution to account for certain peculiarities of the Tartar as well as of the negro physiognomy.

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 14:23:48