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"A similar result arises when we compare the three great intertropical regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the three great continents, which advance into the temperate climates of the southern hemisphere.
This may not be true of the extreme climates in the torrid and glacial zones, but in the temperate zone we may discount entirely climatic influence. The climates of Greece and Italy and that of France are too similar to cause any sensible difference between the Greeks or Latins and the French.
In half an hour a whole village may vanish, emigrating northward in summer, and southward in winter. Many a Kirghiz cavalcade was overtaken on the road, with long tent-ribs and felts tied upon the backs of two-humped camels, for the Bactrian dromedary has not been able to endure the severities of these Northern climates.
"They may be said to have bought up several climates. I have spent a great many hours puzzling over that question, for they have put an end to the old days when young men could go into business with the hope of a progressive future. Now they are swallowed up at once, depersonalized, and the whole matter is one of the great questions affecting the future development of the Republic."
And for the man who emigrates, and comes in contact with rude nature teeming with unsuspected wealth, of what incalculable advantage to have if it be but the rudiments of those sciences, which will tell him the properties, and therefore the value, of the plants, the animals, the minerals, the climates with which he meets?
In a utilitarian point of view, it is certainly an immense advantage to all classes in this country, that Nature has tempered her climates to it in this kindly way. I will not run off upon that line of reflection here, but will make it the subject of a few thoughts somewhere this side of John O'Groat's.
In such climates as England there is always a certain amount of moisture present in the atmosphere, and this moisture may be present as very minute particles of water so minute indeed that they will sink down in an atmosphere of normal density or as vapor.
I said, "I believe several scientific persons Brocchi amongst others have doubted the existence of any specific matter in the atmosphere producing intermittent fevers in marshy countries and hot climates; and have been more disposed to attribute the disease to physical causes, dependent upon the great differences of temperature between day and night and to the refrigerating effects of the dense fogs common in such situations in the evening and morning; and, on this hypothesis, they have recommended warm woollen clothing and fires at night as the best preventives against these destructive diseases, so fatal to the peasants who remain in the summer and autumn in the neighbourhood of the maremme of Rome, Tuscany, or Naples."
Italy was most severely visited, and was said to have lost most of its inhabitants. In the north of Europe two of the brothers of Magnus, King of Sweden, died; and in Westgothland alone 466 priests died. The plague showed no decrease in the northern climates of Iceland and Greenland, and caused great havoc in those countries.
Are we here on the track of the original dispersal of man? It is impossible to say. It is not even certain, though highly probable, that man originated in one spot. If he did, he must have been hereditarily endowed, almost from the outset, with an adaptability to different climates quite unique in its way.
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