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rate observation, to have no existence. If a few marvelous narrations are still retailed by credulous writers, a short time will explode them all, or shew that the facts have been misunderstood; and, that when placed in a proper light, they are susceptible of an easy explanation, on the known, and common principles of nature.

Leaving such pretended facts, and the inferences to which they have given birth, to deserved contempt, I shall now state a few well ascertained phenomena which appear to imply a deviation from the laws of climate as they have been laid down in this essay; and, by the solution of them, endeavour to confirm those laws.

In tracing the same parallels round the globe we do not discern in every region placed at equal distances from the sun the same features and complexion. In the various kingdoms, and districts of India, and along the northern coasts of Africa, nations are mingled together who are distinguished from one another by very conspicuous differences. The torrid zone of Asia is not marked by such a deep colour, nor by such a woolly substance instead of hair, as that of Africa. And the colour of tropical America is, in general, lighter than than of Asia.

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The tropical zone of Africa is not uniform. The complexion of the western coast is of a deeper black than that of the eastern. It is deeper on the northern side of the equator, nearly to the tropic, than in the correspondent parallels on the south. The Abyssinians, in the lightness of their complexion, and the length of their hair, form an exception from all the other inhabitants of that zone. And advancing beyond the tropic towards the South, we find the Hottentots who seem to be a race by themselves; less black than the inhabitants of the torrid zone; but in their manners, the most beastly, and in their persons an the faculties of their minds, approaching the nearest to the brute creation of any of the human species.

For the explication of these varieties it is necessary to observe that the same parallel of latitude does not uniformly indicate the same degree of heat, or cold. Vicinity to the sea, the course of winds, the altitude of lands, and even the nature of the soil, create great variety in the temperature of regions posited at the same distance from the equator. The state of society in which any people take possession of a new country, has a powerful effect in subjecting them to considerable changes in their aspect, from