Dec 22– From The Voyage of The Beagle by Charles Darwin (1839)
Summary: In New Zealand, they rub noses instead of shaking hands.
Commentary: It's interesting how much stuff that we recognize as pseudo-science today Darwin believed in. I've rambled about Lamarckism a couple times, but now we get some Physiognomy (faces show your personality). "Physiognomy here spoke the truth; this chief had been a notorious murderer, and was an arrant coward to boot."
This part was also kind of weird:
The sight of so much fern impresses the mind with an idea of sterility: this, however, is not correct; for wherever the fern grows thick and breast-high, the land by tillage becomes productive.
I would think the presence of thick ferns would mean the land was fertile. I'm not a farmer, so maybe there's some logic here I'm missing.
No comments:
Post a Comment