The Descent of Man

Variation of Animals under Domestication,'
vol. i. p. 8.) The inferiority of Europeans, in
comparison with savages, in eyesight and in
the other senses, is no doubt the accumulated
and transmitted effect of lessened use during
many generations; for Rengger (31. 'Saugethiere
von Paraguay,' s. 8, 10. I have had good opportunities
for observing the extraordinary power
of eyesight in the Fuegians. See also Lawrence
('Lectures on Physiology,' etc., 1822, p. 404) on
this same subject. M. Giraud-Teulon has recently
collected ('Revue des Cours Scientifiques,'
1870, p. 625) a large and valuable body
of evidence proving that the cause of shortsight,
"C'est le travail assidu, de pres.") states
that he has repeatedly observed Europeans,
who had been brought up and spent their
whole lives with the wild Indians, who nevertheless
did not equal them in the sharpness of
their senses. The same naturalist observes that
the cavities in the skull for the reception of the
several sense- organs are larger in the Ameri-