74 PHYSIOGNOMY AN 1) CRANIOLOGY.

origin of a new race.” We can answer for the Professor, andallege he had no such hyperbolical idea in contemplation.He proceeds—“ Food may produce some slight variations;these, however, after emigration, must soon disappear, andcease their operation as well on the source of life as onthat of animal conformation and motion.” It has been alsoobserved, that the nearer man approaches to the frigid zone,the more he m reduced in stature. This appears certainlyas a necessary consequence of that situation; because inde-pendent of its being the very physical nature of cold toshorten and depress, as is invariably found to be thecase, as previously observed in the iigure of the earthitself, and in the pendulum, whence the extension at theequator is accounted for from heat, as its opposite prin-ciple,—the ev anescence at the poles, was justly ascribed tothe only ostensible cause, cold. Indeed, >vere not this as-certained to be a fact, the visible difference in the case ofthe pendulum would immediately determine the question.But independent of this, the economy of nature appears tohave conformed to this circumstance, in rendering the hu-man stature shorter the nearer it approaches the pole, andfor this evident reason: the expanding power of the heart toforce the blood to the extremities, must have been of neces-sity increased ; as it is in this action of the vital liquid theheat of the frame consists. If this circulating mediumwere not duly impelled through the frame, the membersleft without its benefit, would become chill, and totallyuseless; Jmt the Creator ordered the economy of the framein those parts to he constructed upon a different principle;the stature has been shortened, to confine the operation ofits circulation to the trunk, where natural heat accumulating,the whole body has a greater proportion of the comfortablesensation of animal heat; the reverse of which is so sensiblyexperienced by strangers visiting that country.

The inclination of the human face to flatness, in thoseparts, when the same features among different people aregenerally prominent. In those inhabitants last mentioned,their high cheek bones, and small and imperfect eyes, arebelieved to be so produced in consequence of the previouslynamed cause; their eyes, it is probable, appear small andtwinkling from habit, occasioned by the necessity of keep-ing them almost constantly shut, to avoid the piercing winds,and the offensive whiteness of the almost eternal snowsfound in that region.

The Abbe Wiuckelinan, is said to attribute the enormous