Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as clearly a result of good external conditions. ‘Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared food,” says Buffon, “makes the human race degenerate. All those people who live miserably are ugly and ill-made. Even in France, the country people are not so beautiful as those who live in towns; and I have often remarked that in those villages where the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are likewise more handsome, and have better countenances.” He might have added, that elegant and commodious dwellings, cleanly habits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the open air only as much as health requires, co- operate with food in increasing the elegance of a race of human beings. Subject only to these modifying agencies, there is, as has been said, a remarkable persistency in national features and forms, insomuch that a single individual thrown into a family different from him- self is absorbed in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations. But while there is such a per- sistency to ordinary observation, it would also appear that nature has a power of producing new varieties, though this is only done rarely. Such novelties of type abound in the vegetable world, are seen more rarely in the animal circle, and
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