who have come to me for assistance and relief, have been negroes. Of the large number of negroes who have thus applied to me for protection, most of them in an ill-clad and penniless condition, and with no wages due, many have needed, and have received, the attention of skillful physicians and surgeons. Once in the hospital, however, the negroes are, I have found, far less likely to come out alive and well than white patients.

"This much by way of preface. Now let me trouble you for a few items of information. You have, perhaps, already guessed one or two of the points upon which I wish to be enlightened. Why is it that the negroes are so rapidly falling a prey to every manner of fatal affliction? Is it not because Nature is becoming impatient to close her account with them? I ween so, and would be glad to have your opinion on the subject.

"A few years since, while temporarily residing in the city of New York, I frequently accepted the invitations of a youthful relative (I myself being somewhat younger then than I am now!) who was there studying medicine, to accompany him to the dissecting-rooms of the University Medical College, on Fourteenth Street, where, from first to last, I saw the corpses of a great many persons, of almost every age, color and nationality. Among these was no small number of negroes, to whom, as a rule, the peculiarities of extreme attenuation of the limbs, and general gauntness and imperfection of frame, attached in such manner as to excite my particular attention. At sundry times, while looking at them, I was impressed with the conviction,-a conviction which has since been greatly strengthened, that, especially in communities of white people, there is an ever-obvious and uncheckable tendency on the part of the blacks, when put entirely upon their own resources, as they ought everywhere to be put, to decrease, to die, to disappear; in

a word, to cease to retain a vital foothold upon the earth. So may it be!

In the views to which I have thus briefly given expression, am I right, or am I wrong? Not more firmly am I convinced of the bright and genial existence of the sun, than I am that the postulates here advanced are wholly founded in truth. Your reply, and the reasons upon which your own opinions on the subject are based, are awaited with great interest and respect.

To the foregoing communication, the nature-loving and learned Burmiester did me the honor to reply thus:

HINTON R. HELPER, ESQ:

BUENOS AYRES, May 16, 1866.

MY DEAR SIR-I have had the pleasure to receive your letter of yesterday, and have, with great interest, read your statement of the remarkable difference which has fallen under your observation in the number, respectively, of white and black men, who, in your official position, seem to have had claims upon you for relief. It is for me a new proof that, as I have already said in my description of "The Black Man," the negro race is inferior to the white race, particularly in the mental and spiritual forces; for it is a fact well known to every psychologist, that fullness of the spiritual forces, as in the case of the white man, has the happiest influences in promoting and preserving the good health of the body, and in predisposing the whole physical system to recovery, when once unwell.

These auspicious influences are steadily increasing in the white race, and will continue to do so with the grand progress of veritable civilization; and, therefore, the higher and better grades of human society afford generally a stronger power of resistance to the attacks of all fatal disorders. The important truths here considered have always manifested themselves very conspicuously in times of long and terrible epidemics, and also during protracted and bloody wars and great battles.

We may not, therefore, be surprised to find that, in all cases of actual misfortune, and especially in cases of ill-health, the black race exhibits far less power of resistance than the white race. But not only, upon general considerations, is the higher civilization of the white race to be taken as a reason of its greater resistance to leveling

causes.

On this particular point, as already intimated, much may be admitted to be due to the very obvious superiority of the white man's mental and spiritual nature.

A man of inferior endowments is always superstitious and timid; and these are bad qualities which are notoriously common to the negro. Such a man has little faculty or inclination to create resources for himself, and is at all times too willing and too prone to rely upon others for assistance. If overtaken by sickness, and if left to himself, he at once resorts for remedies to one of a thousand or more species of witchcraft, or to some other monstrous system of absurdity, and, as a matter of course, soon falls a victim to his own folly. Indeed, once really sick, from whatever cause, he not unfrequently feels that, from that very moment, he is doomed to die—that his distressful aches and pains are past cure, and that his unsightly wounds and sores cannot be healed.

You know that, as a general rule, diseased or distempered animals cannot be cured. They should, if possible, always be kept in a state of good health; for, except in rare instances, sickness proves fatal to them. Men are affected by a similar law, just in the proportion that they approximate to the condition of animals; and the closest and most numerous approximations of this sort are furnished by the negro race.

Supposing that you would be satisfied with the mere expression of my opinion, I have given it to you in this way; but I am at your service to enter more elaborately into the discussion of the interesting subjects which seem to be now engaging your attention, should you consider it worth while to advance any new or additional hypothesis. Your sincere friend,

HERMANN BURMEISTER.

Contemporary with Dr. Burmeister, and scarcely less distinguished as a Naturalist-a man who, regardless of pre-conceived errors on the part of the multitude, seeks to establish, before all the world, the eternal truth of things-is Prof. Agassiz, who, in Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," page 74, says,

"Accepting the definition with the qualifications just mentioned respecting hybridity, I am prepared to show that the differences existing between the races of men are of the same kind as the differences observed between the different families, genera, and species of

monkeys or other animals; and that these different species of animals differ in the same degree one from the other as the races of men-nay, the differences between distinct races are often greater than those distinguishing species of animals one from the other. The Chimpanzee and Gorilla do not differ more one from the other than the Mandingo and the Guinea Negro; they together do not differ more from the Ourang-outang than the Malay or white man differs from the negro. In proof of this assertion, I need only refer the reader to the description of the anthropoid monkeys published by Prof. Owen and by Dr. J. Wyman, and to such descriptions of the races of men as notice more important peculiarities than the mere differences in the color of the skin. It is, however, but fair to exonerate these authors from the responsibility of any deduction I would draw from a renewed examination of the same facts, differing from theirs; for I maintain distinctly that the differences observed among the races of men are of the same kind and even greater than those upon which the anthropoid monkeys are considered as distinct species."

Again, Prof. Agassiz, (who, as he himself has pithily and notably declared, "has no time to waste in making money,") in Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind,” page 74, says,

“In the genus horse, we have two domesticated species, the common horse and the donkey; in the genus bull, one domesticated species, and the wild buffalo; the three species of bear mentioned are only found in the wild state. The ground upon which these animals are considered as distinct species is simply the fact that, since they have been known to man, they have always preserved the same characteristics. To make specific difference or identity depend upon genetic succession, is begging the principle and taking for granted what in reality is under discussion. It is true that animals of the same species are fertile among themselves, and that their fecundity is an easy test of this natural relation; but this character is not exclusive, since we know that the horse and the ass, the buffalo and our cattle, like many other animals, may be crossed; we are, therefore, not justified, in doubtful cases, in considering the fertility of two animals as decisive of their specific identity. Moreover, generation is not the only way in which certain animals may multiply, as there are entire classes in which the larger number of individuals do not

originate from eggs. Any definition of species in which the question of generation is introduced is, therefore, objectionable."

Again, Prof. Agassiz, in Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," page 68, says,

* ** *

"The earliest migrations recorded, in any form, show us man meeting man, wherever he moves upon the inhabitable surface of the globe, small islands excepted. We have Semitic nations covering the north African and southwest Asiatic fauna, while the south European peninsulas, including Asia Minor, are inhabited by Græco-Roman nations, and the cold, temperate zone, by Celto-Germanic nations; the eastern range of Europe being peopled by Schlaves. This coincidence may justify the inference of an independent origin for these different tribes, as soon as it can be admitted that the races of men were primitively created in nations; the more so, since all of them claim to have been autocthones of the countries they inhabit. This claim is so universal that it well deserves more attention."

Thomas Jefferson, who was, beyond all question, the most philosophic and far-seeing statesman who has yet left upon America the mark of his greatness, in his "Notes on Virginia," (see Jefferson's Works, Volume VIII., pages 380-383,) said,

"Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of color. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one,