ations ago has been dissolved out by the warm rain and balmy air of
the islands.

[Sidenote: The problem of acclimatization.]

In all these instances the white race has been successfully
transplanted. It has domiciled itself on the borders of the Tropics and
has propagated its kind, though it has abated some of the vigorous
qualities which characterized it in its temperate fatherland. In the
real Tropics like India, Cochin China, the Malay Archipelago, and
Central Africa, the whole perplexing and urgent problem of European
colonization turns on the difficulty or impossibility of
acclimatization; and this in turn affects the whole economic, ethnic and
political destiny of present colonial holdings. If acclimatization is
impossible, the alternative is an imported ruling class, constantly
invalided and as constantly renewed, aided by a similar commercial body
acting as superintendents of labor; the whole machine of government and
economic exploitation is supported by a permanent servile native
population, doing the preeminently tropical work of agriculture, which
is so fatal to the white man in a torrid climate. This means that the
conquering white race of the Temperate Zone is to be excluded by adverse
climatic conditions from the productive but undeveloped Tropics, unless
it consents to hybridization, like the Spaniards and Portuguese of
tropical America. In that national struggle for existence which is a
struggle for space, it means an added advantage for the Mediterranean
peoples, that they are more tolerant of a torrid climate than the blond
Teutons, whose disability in this regard is pronounced; it means that
the aptitude of the Chinese for a wide range of climatic accommodation,
from the Arctic circle to the equator, lends color to "the yellow
peril."

[Sidenote: Historical importance of the temperate zones.]

In contrast to the monotonous extremes of climate in the hot and cold
zones, temperate lands are characterized by the intermediate degrees of
annual temperature and marked seasonal diversity which are so favorable
to human development. In Arctic lands labor is paralyzed by cold as it
is by heat in the enervating and overproductive Tropics. In one, the
growing season is too short and ill-favored; in the other, too long to
stimulate man to sustained industry. Hence the Temperate Zones, whose
climate avoids both these extremes and abounds in contrasts, whose
summers are productive enough to supply food for th