SIR C. LYELL TO A.R. WALLACE
73 Harley Street, London, W. November, 1867.
Dear Wallace,—You probably remember an article by Agassiz in an American periodical, the Christian Observer, on the diversity of human races, etc., to prove that each distinct race was originally created for each zoological and botanical province. But while he makes out a good case for the circumscription of the principal races to distinct provinces, he evades in a singular manner the community of the Red Indian race to North and South America. He takes pains to show that the same American race pervades North and South America, or at least all America south of the Arctic region. This was Dr. Morton's opinion, and is, I suppose, not to be gainsaid. In other words, while the Papuan, Indo-Malayan, Negro and other races are strictly limited each of them to a particular region of mammalia, the Red Indian type is common to Sclater's Neo-arctic and Neo-tropical regions. Have you ever considered the explanation [pg 029] of this fact on Darwinian principles? If there were not barbarous tribes like the Fuegians, one might imagine America to have been peopled when mankind was somewhat more advanced and more capable of diffusing itself over an entire continent. But I cannot well understand why isolation such as accompanies a very low state of social progress did not cause the Neo-tropical and Neo-arctic regions to produce by varieties and Natural Selection two very different human races. May it be owing to the smaller lapse of time, which time, nevertheless, was sufficient to allow of the spread of the representatives of one and the same type from Canada to Cape Horn? Have you ever touched on this subject, or can you refer me to anyone who has?—Believe me ever most truly yours,
CHA. LYELL.
TO SIR C. LYELL
1867.
Dear Sir Charles,—Why the colour of man is sometimes constant over large areas while in other cases it varies, we cannot certainly tell; but we may well suppose it to be due to its being more or less correlated with constitutional characters favourable to life. By far the most common colour of man is a warm brown, not very different from that of the American Indian. White and black are alike deviations from this, and are probably correlated with mental and physical peculiarities which have been favourable to the increase and maintenance of the particular race. I shall infer, therefore, that the brown or red was the original colour of man, and that it maintains itself throughout all climates in America because accidental deviations from it have not been accompanied by any useful constitutional peculiarities. It is Bates's opinion that the Indians are recent immigrants into the tropical plains of South America, and are not yet fully acclimatised.—Yours faithfully,
A.R. WALLACE.