Now, of these two classes of colonists, it is the former alone which supply the mortality to which attention is so often drawn. The Mean Whites live as their fathers lived; they inhabit and cultivate the less fertile districts of the island. Far from having deteriorated, their race has improved, and the women, in particular, are remarkable for beauty of form and feature. The race maintains itself perfectly, and seems to be on the increase. Crossing, moreover, has no influence in the matter, for the Mean White, proud of the purity of blood which constitutes his nobility, will not, at any price, ally himself with the Negro or Coolie. Thus at Bourbon, indolence, and the habits which it involves, destroy the rich, and those who try to imitate them, while the poor become acclimatised through sobriety, purity of manners, and a moderate amount of work. From the latter, anthropologists and all the world may learn a lesson of grave importance, at once scientific and moral. VIII. Finally, acclimatisation and naturalisation are as universal in history as migration, of which they are the consequence. We see them daily accomplished under our very eyes, and with the most different races, though almost invariably at the price of human life. In many places, they are purchased very cheaply, so much so, that study alone teaches us that new conditions of life in no case entirely lose their rights. In others, specially in countries characterised by an extreme climate, they involve considerable losses. But there is nothing to authorise us to deny the existence of acclimatisation and naturalisation. Everything, on the contrary, proves that if they are willing to submit to the necessary sacrifices, all human races may live and prosper in almost every climate which is not vitiated by accidental causes. IX. In this case, as in many others, the present explains the past, which also contributes its share of information. Relying upon our own daily experience, and upon facts borrowed from history, we can form a general idea of the manner in which the world has been peopled. The history of the Aryan race alone, gives us, so to speak, that of the whole species. We see it starting from the Bolor, and Hindoo Koh, from the Eeriéné Veedjo, where the summer only lasted two months, descending into Bokhara, and overrunning Persia and Cabul before reaching the basin of the Indus. Eleven stations mark this route followed by the Aryans before reaching the Ganges. We there find them again slowly advancing, though all the time sending forth as a vanguard, those _pious heroes_, who slew the Rakchassas, and prepared the way for conquests. The race is now in the tropics in India, in the Polar circle in Greenland, where the Norwegians and Danes have replaced the Sea-Kings; it spreads over an immense region of more or less temperate climate, and possesses colonies in every part of the world.