Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1884 — CLIMATIC INFLUENCES. [ARTICLE]

CLIMATIC INFLUENCES.

And Their Potency in Bringing About Race Changes. All nations would like to trace their origin back to the ancient Greeks or Latins. None care to claim kinship with the Hottentots or the Caffers. The turfman does not count more on “blood” in the horse than the upper crust of English society on “race”. in man. Every blue blood in that country wants to be considered a descendant of the Normans, as in Spain of the Castilians, in Virginia of the Cavaliers, in New England of the Pilgrims and Puritans. No Spaniard cares to trace his blood back to the Moors, though there is probably far more of that than of the Castilian blood in Spain. Race pride and prejudice, like the pride and prejudice ft caste in India, are the most stubborn characteristics of mankind. CREATING NEW OUT OE OLD-RACES. And yet it is among the facts of history that climate has so potent an influence on race that it may be fairly said to modify it out of all recognition and to create new out of old races. The illustrations are numberless. The present English race is for the most a fusion of Briton, Danish, Saxon, Norseman and Celtic. But even where there has been no fusion, but a preservation of one or another of the original stocks of its purity—as among the Highlanders of Scotland or the lower strata of society in Wales—the influence of climate has so modified the character that it contrasts more strikingly with the original than with the present average Frenchman of Normandy or Celt of Ireland. The Cornishman of this generation is more like the average English fusion of race than like the BelgicGaul, from whom he is popularly supposed to have sprung. The German or Celtic blood, however pure and distinct it may be kept, after two generations in America, is hardly distinguishable one from the other. It becomes a new type or race, as distinct from it prototype as the Greeks or the Germans became from their Indo progenitors. The softening influence of the climate of India disappeared entirely from among the Indo-Germanics s and was modified out of recognition in the character of the ancient Greeks. This may have resulted in part from a fusion of the India stock with an aboriginal race, bo£li in Greece and in Germany, but there is no history to substantiate tho hypothesis. THE VANDALS AND ITALIANS. Other experience with the historic era supports the theory that climate changes the race character. When the Vandals entered Spain from the north as conquerors they possessed all the characteristics of the hardy Norseman. After a few generation in that warm climate these characteristics softened and another wave of conquerors from the north supplanted them, and after two centuries’ residence in Africa every original northern quality was lost and Gen. Belisarius found it as easy to subjugate them as it was for Aurelian to conqueror the effeminate Palmyreans. The Gauls, Goths, Lombards, and Huns, who in their turn flooded Italy with migratory waves, either as conquerors or tolerated settlers, each in turn, after a few generations, became in all respects Italians, a new race, quite distinct from those v whence they sprung. Doubtless something of this change was due to intermarriage with the Italian stock, but not as much as to the change of climate conditions, for the offspring of the fusion soon became as enervated as the Syrian stock, of which the Romans complained centuries before that is was destroying the vigor of Roman character. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN RACE. The Spaniards who conquered and settled in Mexico, Central and South America, nearly a century before the English colonized in North America, were not discounted in vigor, energy, courage and resolution by any race that ever existed. But after the second or third generation had passed there remained hardly a vistago of the original qualities imported from Spain. The Spanish-American race, under the enervating influence of the South and Centra! American climate, was sunk out of all comparison below that of tho English and Celtic stock tliat planted themselves in the invigorating climate of North America. Something of this remarkable change may also be attributed to intermarriage with the native races and to the rapid decline of Spain herself as a great power among nations after the death of Philip 11. But not so much as to the effects of climate. The fusion race was not up to the standard of the Aztecs in the valley of Mexico, or the Incas in the Peruvian plateau, either physically or intellectually. IN THE UNITED STATES. The contrast is almost as striking between the descendentsof the races that originally settled the American States as between the Spanish and the English blood as we now find it on this continent. After two centuries and a half the people of New England and New York not only compare favorably with tho present condition of the races whence they sprang, but have improved the blood in many respects and originated a distinctive race superior to anything found in the Old World. In the same generations tho sbftening influence of climate in the States south of the Roanoke has reduced precisely the same original blood to a condition that to say the least, does not compare favorable with that of the foremost people of the Old World to-day. It may be said, and perhaps with truth, that slavery is partly the cause of the southern inertia. The answer to that is that the climate invited slavery and is therefore the underlying cause.— San Francisco Chronicle.