coming to look upon him again in July, I found that the Back and Sides, together with the upper part of the Head and Tayl were already grown of a Dark Colour, the lower part of the Head and Belly containing as yet a Whiteness.  Let me add, that were it not for some scruple I have, I should think more than what Olaus relates, confirm’d by the judicious Olearius, who was twice employ’d into those parts as a Publick Minister, who in his Account of Moscovy has this Passage:  The Hares there are Gray; but in some Provinces they grow white in the Winter.  And within some few Lines after:  It is not very Difficult to find the Cause of this Change, which certainly proceeds only from the Outward Cold, since I know that even in Summer, Hares will change Colour, if they be kept a competent time in a Cellar; I say, were it not for Some Scruple, because I take notice, that in the same Page the Author Affirms, that the like change of Colour that happens to Hares in some Provinces of Muscovy, happens to them also in Livonia, and yet immediately subjoyns, that in Curland the Hares vary not their Colour in Winter, though these two last named Countries be contiguous, (that is) sever’d only by the River of Dugna; For it is scarce conceivable how Cold alone should have, in Countries so near, so strangely differing an operation, though no less strange a thing is confess’d by many, that ascribe the Complexion of Negroes to the Heat of the Sun, when they would have the River of Cenega so to bound the Moors, that though on the North-side they are but Tawny, on the other side they are Black.

  [10] Olearius Voyage de Mosco. et de Perse liv. 3.

There is another Opinion concerning the Complexion of Negroes, that is not only embrac’d by many of the more Vulgar Writers, but likewise by that ingenious Traveller Mr. Sandys, and by a late most learned Critick, besides other men of Note, and these would have the Blackness of Negroes an effect of Noah’s Curse ratify’d by God’s, upon Cham; But though I think that even a Naturalist may without disparagement believe all the Miracles attested by the Holy Scriptures, yet in this case to flye to a Supernatural Cause, will, I fear, look like Shifting off the Difficulty, instead of Resolving it; for we enquire not the First and Universal, but the Proper, Immediate, and Physical Cause of the Jetty Colour of Negroes; And not only we do not find expressed in the Scripture, that the Curse meant by Noah to Cham, was the Blackness of his Posterity, but we do find plainly enough there that the Curse was quite another thing, namely that he should be a Servant of Servants, that is by an Ebraism, a very Abject Servant to his Brethren, which accordingly did in part come to pass, when the Israelites of the posterity of Sem, subdued the Canaanites, that descended from Cham,