A QUESTION OF COLOR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3652, 12 October 1912, Page 10

A QUESTION OF COLOR.

| One of t-lie bedrocks of controversy is the inheritance of acquired characters. An acqxiired character, such as a broken leg, will evidently not bo transmitted to offspring, but it requires a logical mind and a consider- , able acquaintance with biology to he convinced that disease is not hereditary. In the course of the many controversies which have arisen on the subject, says the “Morning Post,” skin color is sometimes cited as - an acquired characteristic which is transmitted. The line of reasoning runs in this way: Brunette and mulatto skins are apparently identical from a structural or histological point of view; the only difference between them is in the number of pigment granules. Moreover, under protracted exposure to the sun and extuemes of heat a white skin acquires a number of pigment granules, and becomes burnt to darkne-ss. Consequently, as the negro originally hails from tropical regions, it is to be supposed that the pigmentation in . his skin has arisen as a responsive demand against the rays of the sun, just as whites acquire tan. Here, then, is an acquired characteristic which has been transmitted y moreover, according to some

theorists, this color characteristic shows its acquired character by a tendency to fade. Professor H. E. Jordan offers two demurrers to this judgment. In the first place there is no proof that continued residence in a tropic clime would in the course of a considerable number of generations convert a fairskinned race into a dark one. The little evidence we have is in the contrary direction. The inhabitants of Saba in the West Indies which was colonised by the Dutch, retained, according to the Bishop of' Antigua, “the same clear white and red complexion which their ancestors brought from Holland two hundred years before.” It seems, therefore, that there may be some other explanation of the negroid skin than that it is the “shadowed livery of the burnished sun.” Professor Jordan suggests that it is an inheritance from anthropoid ancestors. In the first place the negro is a primitive type of man as indicated by numerous anatomical marks which are more or less infantile. He apparently stands much nearer than the European races to the anthropoid apes with pigmented faces. The negro may, therefore, have inherited his dark skin from his pigmented pre-man ancestors. He may be habitually an inhabitant of the tropics, because he alone could survive in that climate, or because he was best suited there. In short, his skin is not the direct response to the climate, hut is a much more remote characteristic of the branch of the apes from which negroid man sprang. The dark skinned races, like the Indians and Spanish, and finally, the brunettes of the Anglo-Sax-on race, may none the less owe their pigmentation to an intermingling of negroid ancestry. The connecting link may well have been the negro slaves of Roman times and the conquering Teutons.