The excessive heat of the Tropics, on the other hand, enfeebles man. It invites to repose and inaction. Not only in the vegetable world and in the lower animals is the power of life carried to its highest degree, —in tropical man, too, physical nature excels. There the life of the body overmasters that of the soul. The physical instincts eclipse the higher faculties; passion predominates over intellect and reason; the passive over the active faculties.

While a temperate climate is thus most favourable for developing man's intellectual vigour and physical strength, it is also most suitable for those animal and vegetable products which are best adapted to meet the wants of the great mass of mankind. Thus the ox and the sheep—the ruminants most useful to man—are natives of the Temperate Zone, and are diffused very widely and in vast numbers over it. From his home in Central Asia, the horse—the indispensable ally of man in every kind of industry, in war as in peace, in his pleasures as in his toils—has spread round and round the globe. The feathered tribes, too, exist in such abundance in these regions as to form in some countries a staple article of food.