narily include under a common denomination. Between the Aryan and Semitic branches, for example, the contrast is very clear. All the statistical documents and all the observations at large (grands traits) that have been made to this day go to confirm the greatly superior power of acclimatization of the Semitic to the Aryan peoples. The latter peoples may also be divided; and it is easy to separate those varieties with different aptitudes into geographical groups. The peoples of the south, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Maltese, and the Sicilians, are much superior to those of the north—so much so that the choice of one or another of these elements might be of decisive importance for the success of a colonizing enterprise.
In this may be found the solution of the controversy into which I have been drawn in the course of political debates. The fact is, that the history of the colonization of the Antilles shows us that, in the French and English establishments, the results of colonization have always been disastrous for immigrants from Europe, while in the Spanish colonies the results have been relatively favorable, although not so favorable as my adversaries have wished to make them appear.
These general observations must not, however, be accepted without reservation. They as yet represent only the starting-point of the discussion which it remains for us to bring to bear upon two capital questions. The first of these questions is concerning the opinion, which seems at the outset extremely plausible, that immigration into regions near the tropics, or even under the tropics, is nearly harmless to peoples who are natives of southern latitudes. Nothing is further from being proved, as we may see by referring to the negroes, whom it is very difficult to remove safely from one tropical country to another. The French in Senegal have had sad experience of this fact, and have seen death make terrible ravages among black populations which they had transplanted from their native land.
Another consideration that it is important not to lose sight of is that the farther south we go the more have the Aryan branches been exposed to foreign admixtures. The Maltese race, for example, exhibits a much superior resistance to the Sicilian or the southern Spanish race. We might be tempted to explain this by the insular situation of the former race, and by the character of the climate of its country. In that case the Maltese, transported to the African Continent, for instance, to a considerable distance from the coast, having come out from a climate distinctly insular, might be supposed to feel the change more profoundly than a Spaniard coming from his more continental climate. But nothing of the kind takes place. Algerian statistics establish most positively that the Maltese constantly holds his overwhelming superiority in adaptability over the Spaniard.
So the explanation of the special power of resistance shown by this race can not be based entirely upon an agreement of the climate of its native country with that of the place to which it emigrates.
