Physical geography. By Mary Somerville ...

CHAP. XXXIII. DIVERSITY OF 0CO oR. 479
French, Latin, and Latinized words. Scotch spoken throughout the
Lowlands of Scotland is a language independent of the English,
though of the same stock; it is derived from the low German, the
Frisian, Dutch, and Flemish, and differs widely from the AngloSaxon.
No circumstance in the natural world is more inexplicable than
the diversity of form and colour in the human race. It had already
begun in the antediluvian world, for "there were giants in the land
in those days." No direct mention is made of colour at that time
unless it was the mark set upon Cain, "lest any one finding him
should kill him," may allude to it. Perhaps, also, it may be inferred
that black people dwelt in Ethiopia, or the land of Cush, which
means black in the Hebrew language. At all events, the difference
now existing must have arisen after the flood, consequently all must
have originated with Noah, whose wife, or the wives of his sons,
may have been of different colours, for aught we know.
Many instances have occurred in modern times of albinos and
red-haired children having been born of black parents, and these
have transmitted their peculiarities to their descendants for several
generations; but it may be doubted whether pure-blooded white
people have had perfectly black offspring. The varieties are much
more likely to have arisen from the effects of climate, food, customs,
and civilization upon migratory groups of mankind; and of such, a
few instances have occurred in historical times, limited, however, to
small numbers and particular spots; but the great mass of nations
had received their distinctive characters at a very early period. The
permanency of type is one of the most striking circumstances, and
proves the length of time necessary to produce a change in national
structure and colour. A nation of Ethiopians existed 3450 years
ago, which emigrated from a remote country and settled near Egypt,
and there must have been black people before the age of Solomon,
otherwise he would not have alluded to colour, even poetically. The
national appearance of the Ethiopians, Persians, and Jews, has not
varied for more than 3000 years, as appears from the ancient Egyptian paintings in the tomb of Rhamses the Great, discovered at
Thebes by Belzoni, in which the countenance of the modern Ethiopian and Persian can be readily recognised, and the Jewish features
and colour are identical with those of the Israelites daily met with
in London. Civilization is supposed to have great influence on
colour, having a tendency to make the dark shade more general,
and it appears that, in the crossing of two shades, the offspring
takes the complexion of the darker, and the form of the fairer. But
as there is no instance of a new variety of mankind having been
established as a nation since the Christian era, there must either
have been a greater energy in the causes of chang bebefore that time,
or, brief as the span of man on earth has been, a wrong estimato