origin, for anything that can be inferred from external peculiarities. It appears from this inquiry, {278} that colour and other physiological characters are of a more superficial and accidental nature than was at one time supposed. One fact is at the very first extremely startling, that there are nations, such as the inhabitants of Hindostan, known to be one in descent, which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all shades of colour, and likewise discrepant in other of those important features on which much stress has been laid. Some other facts, which I may state in brief terms, are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa, there are Negro nations,—that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, whose features and limbs are as elegant as those of the best European nations. While we have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may be held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as the other inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to shew the possibility of a natural transition by generation from the black to the white complexion, and from the white to the black. True whites (apart from Albinoes) are not unfrequently born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families. There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set of perfectly black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no such blood had intermingled. This occurred in the valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any other tribes of the same nation. {280}