We do not mean to insinuate that the same people have their corpus mucosum sensibly vary, as often as they go into another latitude, but that the fact is true only of different people, who have been long established in different latitudes.
We beg leave to return our thanks here to a gentleman, eminent in the medical line, who furnished us with the above-mentioned facts.
Suppose we were to see two nations, contiguous to each other, of black and white inhabitants in the same parallel, even this would be no objection, for many circumstances are to be considered. A black people may have wandered into a white, and a white people into a black latitude, and they may not have been settled there a sufficient length of time for such a change to have been accomplished in their complexion, as that they should be like the old established inhabitants of the parallel, into which they have lately come.
Justamond's Abbe Raynal, v. 5. p. 193.
The author of this Essay made it his business to inquire of the most intelligent of those, whom he could meet with in London, as to the authenticity of the fact. All those from America assured him that it was strictly true; those from the West-Indies, that they had never observed it there; but that they had found a sensible difference in themselves since they came to England.
This circumstance, which always happens, shews that they are descended from the same parents as ourselves; for had they been a distinct species of men, and the blackness entirely ingrafted in their constitution and frame, there is great reason to presume, that their children would have been born black.
This observation was communicated to us by the gentleman in the medical line, to whom we returned our thanks for certain anatomical facts.
Philos. Trans. No. 476. sect. 4.
Treatise upon the Trade from Great Britain to Africa, by an African merchant.
We mean such only as are natives of the countries which we mention, and whose ancestors have been settled there for a certain period of time.