cerning themselves about the rules of acclimatization and its diseases, any more than a starving man asks about the sanitary qualities of a ham that is offered to him.
The question before us is not of an isolated enterprise, but of very extensive ones, and is of interest to the empire as well as to the great companies which are lending their aid to emigration. Great problems must be resolved, in order that we may in the future be in a situation to inform our colonists respecting the fate which awaits them, to found colonies with a foresight of what the probable results will be, and to send emigrants into distant countries under, the choice of circumstances which will permit them to hope for an assured existence.
These are questions which no general, war minister, or statesman has a right to evade. Why should it be different with those at whose invitation battalions of emigrants leave their country? There is New Guinea, with its rich plains and immense forests coming down to the river-banks. It is no longer a question of sending there only specialists to discover the most profitable timber-trees and then found business establishments. Just as in the last century, when the French desired to colonize Cayenne; what beautiful descriptions did they give of the fertile country, with its luxuriant flora, its wonderful forests, and its ravishing prairies! When the thousands and thousands of colonists who were sent there had perished to the last man, the French settled down to admire the photographs of those wonderful forests and stay quietly at home, leaving to those whose ethnological province is in Cayenne the task of propagating themselves and attending to their affairs. I have no doubt that we shall soon be forced to follow this example, and I hope that the frankness with which I declare this conviction will prompt us all to fulfill the duty which this great popular movement imposes upon naturalists and physicians. It is our duty to take hold of the question and organize the study of it, and to arm ourselves with scientific methods for the exploration of these distant countries, and for ascertaining to what point a permanent colonization in them is possible.
We need more than isolated examples to satisfy ourselves of the adaptability of the white race to fix itself in this or that place. A peculiar population exists in the mountainous region of the Island of Réunion, called “petits blancs” or little whites, who have been ascertained to be the last remains of the French colonists who established themselves in that part of the island a great many years ago. Recently a French traveler discovered in the Vindhya Mountains, in India, some survivors of a French colony which was founded there three centuries ago. There is nothing impossible in these facts; but they singularly remind us of the exotic conifers which are planted in our experimental forests. Now and then a forester has a success with one of them, and the little plant becomes an object of curiosity to travelers and the people of the neighborhood. But the number of
