Note 109 — Chapter IV
Hugh J. C. Beavan translation
“The physical characteristics which distinguish human races, one from the other, are, perhaps, the one fact in natural history which has always most struck the imagination of mankind.... Historians relate, that when Columbus first returned, Europeans could not take their eyes off the plants and unknown animals which he had brought with him; and above all, the Indians, so different from all the races of men they had ever seen.”—Flourens, Considérations sur l’enseignement de l’Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme. (Annales des Sciences Naturelles, vol. x, p. 357.) This wonder is renewed every day; and I once knew an intelligent negro who had a very unpleasant remembrance of the French provinces, where he had been the object of a very general and indiscreet curiosity.