The Art of Living in Australia | Page 7

the violet extremity there are rays endowed with far more powerful chemical action. The violet, and especially these latter ultra-violet rays, redden the life stream by increasing the haemoglobin--that crystallizable body which forms so large a portion of the coloured corpuscles of the blood. Sunlight, moreover, has not only this action upon the animal kingdom, but also upon the vegetable world as well Plants, like celery, which are subjected to blanching, become whitened under the process of etiolation. This is due to the absence of chlorophyll, the green colouring matter of plants, which can only be developed by the presence of light. The tops of celery, being unearthed, retain their green colour, while the stem embedded in the soil acquires its familiar whiteness.
Many philosophical writers, notably David Hume and Charles Comte, C. Montesquieu in his L'Esprit des Lois, and Henry Thomas Buckle in his HISTORY OF CIVILISATION IN ENGLAND, have dilated upon the influence which climate exerts over race, and all their forceful opinions are to the effect that the character of a people is moulded by climatic conditions. More than this, the same new was entertained by the classic writers; for we find the philosopher and orator Cicero recording his belief that "Athens has a light atmosphere, whence the Athenians are thought to be more keenly intelligent; Thebes a dense one, and the Thebans fat-witted accordingly." Again, Horace, the poet and satirist, has given us the famous passage:--" You would swear he (Alexander the Great) was born in the dense atmosphere of the Boeotians."
But the influence of climate is not confined to ordinary conditions alone, because without the shadow of a doubt it controls disease as well. As it is well known, certain diseases are peculiar to, and confined to, certain regions. And, moreover, a malady will vary in its type in different zones. Thus the disease known as rickets is in the old country marked in many cases by bending of the bones, giving rise to deformities of the limbs, &c. The Australian type of the disorder, however, is milder altogether, and is of a different character. The Australian child is straight-limbed almost without exception, yet the Australian type of rickety disease, as I pointed out in 1891, is quite a definite affection.
At the Congress of Naturalists and Physicians at Strasburg in 1885 the great German pathologist, Professor Virchow, called attention to a sphere of research in which, he alleged, neither the French nor the English had hitherto accomplished anything of importance, namely, the modifications of the organism, and particularly of the special alterations of each organ, connected with the phenomena of acclimatization. This reproach cannot be denied. We have not yet reached the stage in Australia of noting the effect which climate has upon the system in general, much less of inquiring into the changes which occur in such organs as the liver, spleen, &c. But apart from investigating the phenomena of acclimatization, it is very plain that the people of Australia have never given any heed to their semitropical climate, or else the food-faults now universally practised would have been rectified long before this.
It has always been a matter of interesting speculation as to what the characteristic type of the future Australian will be. But reflections of this kind can only be in the right direction by bearing in mind the ever-present climatic conditions. Climate is of all forces the most irresistible; for, on the one hand, the Great Desert of Sahara could not be crossed in an Arctic costume and on Esquimaux diet; nor, on the other, could the Polar regions be explored in a Hindoo garb and on Oriental fare. And though blood is thicker than water, yet the resistless influence of a semi-tropical range of temperature will be to imprint on the descendants of the present inhabitants of Australia some marked peculiarities of skin-colour, of facial expression, of lingual accent, and perhaps even of bodily conformation.
Quite recently an observing writer, in a keenly analytical if somewhat facetious article, gave it as his opinion that the coming Australians will be as follows:--"They will not be so entirely agricultural as the Americans were; they will be horsemen, not gig-drivers. Descended from adventurers, not from Puritans, and eager, as men of their climate must be, for pleasant lives, they will thirst for dependent possessions, for gardens where fortunes grow. The early Americans were men of austere temper, who led, on an ungrateful soil, lives of permanent hardship. They had to fight the sea, the snow, the forest, the Indians, and their own hearts. The Australians, with a warmer climate, without Puritan traditions, with wealth among them from the first, will be a softer, though not a weaker people; fonder of luxury, and better fitted to enjoy Art, with an appreciation of beauty which the Americans have