Considered from a physiological point of view, the Hyperboreans are distinguished by a remarkable uniformity of characteristics, which deserve to be specified. The sanguine temperament predominates among them. Their nervous system is but slightly developed, their sensibility blunted, their intelligence slow, their imagination feeble. Their external perspiration is almost null, and they are accustomed to suppress it entirely by induing their bodies in oily substances. On the other hand, their organs of nutrition and respiration are endowed with an extraordinary activity; and in this lies the secret of the extreme facility with which they support for several successive months the most rigorous cold. We know, indeed, that man and the warm-blooded animals possess, in their respiratory apparatus, a positive internal furnace, where a notable part of the carbon and the hydrogen contained in their venous blood is consumed in contact with the air. But to maintain this furnace at such a degree of heat as shall always preserve the temperature of the body at its normal standard (39° C.), the inhabitants of Arctic climes need constantly feed it with fuel, that is, with substances rich in carbon and hydrogen. Hence the keen appetite of the Hyperboreans for oil, fat, and flesh; hence, too, their voracity. The inhabitants of torrid or temperate regions, while sojourning among the icy wastes of the Pole, quickly become sensible of the same necessity, and eagerly feed upon aliments which elsewhere would inspire them with insurmountable disgust. It is a remarkable fact that most of the diseases so frequent and so murderous in civilized countries are unknown in the Polar lands. But, on the other hand, ophthalmia is endemic, and the cutaneous affections, as well as cerebral and pulmonary congestion, are of common occurrence. To sum up: the already scattered and scanty population of the Arctic Zone is daily decreasing, and will probably be extinct in a few generations. The manners of all the Hyperboreans present the same general features: they are peaceable, inoffensive, and reduced, if I may use the expression, to the utmost possible minimum of physical and intellectual activity. This race, or group of races, is represented on the two continents by several distinct peoples. Those most clearly defined are:-- In Europe, the Laplanders (or Lapps), and the Samoiedes; In Asia, the Ostiaks, Yakouts, and Kamtschatdales; and, In North America, the Eskimos (or Esquimaux).