406. The Persians-who live chiefly on pilau, or boiled rice, and fruit-are acknowledged to be a race of great strength and beauty of form.-" Judging from the acounts of all navigators who have visited the Friendly and Society Isles, I am inclined to think”, says a recent voyager, "that the people of the Marquesas and Washington Islands, excel in beauty and grandeur of form,-in regularity of features, and of colour, all the other South Sea Islanders. The men are almost all tall, robust, and well made. We did not see a single cripple, nor deformed person; but such general beauty and regularity of form, that it greatly excited our astonishment. Many of them might very well have been placed by the side of the most celebrated masterpieces of antiquity, and would have lost nothing by the comparison. One man (a native of Nukahiwa) whom we carefully measured, corresponded perfectly, in every part, with the Apollo Belvidere. food of these people consists of bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, bananas, yams, batatas, &c.; and mostly in a natural state."

The

407. Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations", informs us, that the most beautiful women in the British dominions, are said to be (the greater part of them) from the lower rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with potatoes. The peasantry of Lancashire and Cheshire, also, who live principally on potatoes and butter-milk, are celebrated as the handsomest race in England.

408. The interesting natives of Pitcairn's Island, who sprang from the mutineers of his Britannic Majesty's ship Bounty, strikingly illustrate the principles before us:

"Yams constitute their principal food; either boiled, baked, or mixed with cocoa-nut made into cakes, and eaten with molasses extracted from the taro-root. Taroroot is no bad substitute for bread; and bananas, plantains, and appoi, are wholesome and nutritive fruits. The common beverage is water; but they make a tea from the tea-plant, flavoured with ginger, and sweetened with the juice of the sugar-cane. They but seldom kill a pig;-living mostly on fruit and vegetables. With this simple diet, early rising, and taking a great deal of exercise, they are subject to few diseases; and Captain Beechey says, they are certainly a finer and more athletic race, than is usually found among the families of mankind. The young men, all born on this island, were finely formed, athletic, and handsome; their countenances open and pleasing; indicating unruffled good humour. Their teeth are described as beautifully white,-like the finest ivory; and perfectly regular, without a single exception."

409. Humboldt informs us, that he never saw a hunchbacked Mexican Indian; and that they seem to be exempt from every species of deformity. "The Indians of Mexico, on the Tobasco river," says says another very intelligent gentleman, who had resided a number of years among them, "subsist almost entirely on vegetable food: their principal article of diet is Indian corn. Those who abstain from the use of ardent spirits, are muscular and strong; and among them are to be found models for the sculptor."*

* GRAHAM'S LECTURES. Vol. II. P. 166.

410. Many nations who feed upon flesh, are noted for qualities directly opposed to these ;-as the inhabitants of the Andeman Islands, who seldom exceed five feet in stature; with limbs disproportionately slender and illformed, together with high shoulders and large heads: their aspect is extremely uncouth. The same may be said of the Calmucks, of the natives of Van Dieman's Land, and of the New Hollanders. "The inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia," says Professor Lawrence,* "the Laplanders, Samoiedes, Ostiacs, Turgooses, Burats, and Kamtschatdales, as well as the Esquimaux in the northern, and the natives of Terra del Fuego in the southern extremity of America, are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people of the globe; although they live almost entirely on flesh, and that often raw."

411. The Indians of Patagonia, and of the great Pampas or plains of South America, seem to form the most remarkable exception to the general rule, with regard to flesh-eating tribes and nations. The earliest accounts which we have of the Patagonians, describe them as almost a race of giants ;-some of them measuring ten or eleven feet, and being (on an average) much taller than any other known portion of the human family, and every way well proportioned. These accounts, however, seem to have been greatly exaggerated. Bougainville, in 1767, landed amongst the Patagonians. Of their size he remarks" They have a fine shape: among those whom we saw, not one was below five feet ten inches and a quarter (English), nor above six feet two inches

GRAHAM'S LECTURES. Vol. II. P. 186.

and a half in height. Their gigantic appearance arises from their prodigiously broad shoulders, the size of their heads, and the thickness of all their limbs. They are robust and well fed: their nerves are braced, and their muscles strong, &c." Wallis, who visited them shortly afterwards, says "The stature of the greatest part of them was from five feet ten inches to six feet." Captain King, who visited them in 1827, gives precisely the same dimensions; but says-" It is possible that the preceding generation may have been a larger race of people; for none that we saw could have been alive at the time of Wallis's or Byron's voyage." Messrs. Armes and Coan, the American missionaries, who have recently spent three months among them,-state that the present inhabitants of Patagonia fall very considerably short of the descriptions given of their ancestors, some two or three hundred years back;-" the tallest of them not exceeding six feet two inches in height, and few of them reaching this. They are evidently", says Mr. Armes, "a degraded race of men; and are still becoming more degenerated."

412. Sylvester Graham says:-"If any dependance can be placed on the opinions of those who have written and testified concerning this people, the Patagonians originally sprang from a race of islanders of very great bodily size and harmony of proportions, and who were strictly vegetable-eaters. If this is true, it would naturally require a succession of several generations, under the most unfavourable circumstances and diet of savage life, to degenerate the race to the diminished size of other flesheating tribes." They live in an exceedingly mild and

uniform climate; the atmosphere is dry and salubrious, and they take a great deal of exercise in the open air ;all which circumstances are favourable to their physical development.

413. The size, symmetry, and beauty of form, in nations and individuals, are modified by so great a variety of circumstances,—such as climate, air, occupation, &c., that no indubitable evidence, as to the influence of food in producing these qualities, can be obtained by a mere reference to history and experience; yet the examples they afford us are sufficiently clear and numerous, to confirm our physiological deductions.