dismissal. Even journalism has referred to the connection between land and man, and a writer in the 'St. James's Gazette' (January 6th, 1881) on the London Clay remarks:—"In the old days all London lay upon the few scattered patches of pleistocene gravel which here and there cap the surface, because it was only on the gravel that water could be obtained from springs or wells. Hence the original development of the suburbs, as Prof. Prestwich has pointed out, followed with unerring precision the zig-zag course of the pleistocene tracts." "In Caithness the best cereals, cattle, and men were raised on the boulder clay, and where it was wanting, the corn, cattle, and men were miserable."[1] Frank Buckland states:—"The geological formation of a district I found, in examining recruits for the regiment, has considerable effect upon the stature of its inhabitants; coal- producing counties, as a rule, generally grow the tallest, and, at the same time, the largest-boned men."[2]
But although facts may be found to support new suggestions, such as a possible original assimilative colouration of man, the quest for such produces other recorded observations, which, though not altogether contradictory to the view, still point to other causes, support other conclusions, and reassert the problem we seek to solve. Thus we find indications of the influence of food in human colouration. The ship "Strathmore" was wrecked upon one of the rocks of the "Twelve Apostles," an island in the Crozet group, on July 1st, 1875, and the survivors of the passengers and crew, before being rescued, remained there for a period of six months and twenty-two days. Of the events that occurred during that time we have the narrative of Mrs. Wordsworth and her son. Speaking of a period four months subsequent to the wreck, and when Penguins' eggs had begun to furnish the castaways with ample food, Mrs. Wordsworth remarks:—"The eggs did everyone a great deal of good; those who had been
- ↑ Cleghorn, 'Anthropological Review,' 1868, No. 20, p. xxi.
- ↑ 'Curiosities Nat. Hist.,' popular edition, 4th series, p. 9.—A similar observation is recorded by Mr. Atmore in South African ornithology:—"The Rock-chat (Saxicola cinerea) is abundant in the Karroo—and, by the way, how well this class of birds obeys the geology of the country; wherever there is Karroo soil you find them. The same also with the 'Kalkvent-je' (Macronyx capensis), which is found in every patch of grass country, but never in Karroo soil" (Layard's 'Birds S. Africa,' Sharpe's edition, p. 242).
