Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 260 pages of information about Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664).

Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 260 pages of information about Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664).
Convincing; for though the Heat of the Sun may Darken the Colour of the Skin, by that Operation, which we in English call Sun-burning, yet Experience doth not Evince, that I remember, That that Heat alone can produce a Discolouring that shall amount to a true Blackness, like that of Negroes, and we shall see by and by that even the Children of some Negroes not yet 10. dayes Old (perhaps not so much by three quarters of that time) will notwithstanding their Infancy be of the same Hue with their Parents.  Besides, there is this strong Argument to be alleg’d against the Vulgar Opinion, that in divers places in Asia under the same Parallel, or even of the same Degree of Latitude with the African Regions Inhabited by Blacks, the People are at most but Tawny;[10] And in Africa it self divers Nations in the Empire of Ethiopia are not Negroes, though Situated in the Torrid Zone, and as neer the AEquinoctial, as other Nations that are so (as the Black Inhabitants of Zeylan and Malabar are not in our Globes plac’d so near the Line as Amara the Famousest place in Ethiopia.) Moreover, (that which is of no small Moment in our present Disquisition) I find not by the best Navigators and Travellers to the West-Indies, whose Books or themselves I have consulted on this Subject, that excepting perhaps one place or two of small extent, there are any Blacks Originally Natives of any part of America (for the Blacks now there have been by the Europeans long Transplanted thither) though the New World contain in it so great a Variety of Climates, and particularly reach quite Cross the Torri’d Zone from one Tropick to another.  And enough it be true that the Danes be a Whiter People than the Spaniards, yet that may proceed rather from other causes (not here to be enquired into) than from the Coldness of the Climate, since not onely the Swedes and other Inhabitants of those Cold Countreys, are not usually so White as the Danes, nor Whiter than other Nations in proportion to their Vicinity to the Pole. [And since the Writing of the former part of this Essay, having an opportunity on a Solemn occasion to take Notice of the Numerous Train of Some Extraordinary Embassadours sent from the Russian Emperour to a great Monarch, observ’d, that (though it were then Winter) the Colour of their Hair and Skin was far less Whitish than the Danes who Inhabit a milder Region is wont to be, but rather for the most part of a Darkish Brown; And the Physician to the Embassadour with whom those Russes came, being ask’d by me whether in Muscovy it self the Generality of the People were more inclin’d to have Dark-colour’d Hair than Flaxen, he answer’d Affirmatively; but seem’d to suspect that the True and Antient Russians, a Sept of whom he told me he had met with in one of the Provinces of that vast Empire, were rather White like the Danes,
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Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.