er
proper discipline. The Melanic race have a much stronger propensity to
indulge in the intemperate use of ardent spirits than white people. They
appear to have a natural fondness for alcoholic drinks and tobacco. They
need no schooling, as the fair skin races do, to acquire a fondness for
either. Nearly all chew tobacco or smoke, and are not sickened and
disgusted with the taste of that weed as white men always are when they
first begin to use it. As an instance of their natural love for ardent
spirits, I was called to a number of negro children, who found a bottle
of whisky under a bed, and drank it all without dilution, although it
was the first they had ever tasted. It contained arsenic, and had been
placed where they found it by the father of some of the children, with a
view of poisoning a supposed enemy. But with that want of forethought,
so characteristic of the negro race, he did not think of the greater
probability of his own children finding and drinking the poison than the
enemy he intended it for.

I am asked, "_If I have determined by my own observation the facts in
regard to the darker color of the secretions, the flesh, the membranes
and the blood of the negro than the white man--or is the statement made
on the authority of others?_"

The statement is made on the authority of some of the most distinguished
anatomists and physiologists of the last century, confirmed by my own
repeated observations. The authorities to which I particularly refer are
Malpighi, Stubner, Meckel, Pechlin, Albinus, Soemmering, Virey and Ebel.
Almost every year of my professional life, except a few years when
abroad, I have made post mortem examinations of negroes, who have died
of various diseases, and I have invariably found the darker color
pervading the flesh and the membranes to be very evident in all those
who died of acute diseases. Chronic ailments have a tendency to destroy
the coloring matter, and generally cause the mucous surfaces to be paler
and whiter than in the white race.

I now come to the main and important question--the last of the series,
and the most important of all, viz: "_How is it ascertained that negroes
consume less oxygen than white people?_"

I answer, by the spirometer. I have delayed my reply to make some
further experiments on this branch of the subject. The result is, that
the expansibility of the lungs is considerably less in the black than
the white race of similar size, age and habit. A w