OCR Rendition - approximate

340 SIR H. B. FRERE.-On the Laws affecting the around him. Few figures have less of the picturesque about them than the same warrior bent with the weight of three score years and ten, and clad in the costume of an English rat catcher. Certainly any one who sees the ordinary Kaffir labourer of modern days, divested of his usual European dress, either at work on the beach of Port Elizabeth or driving game on a hill side, or basking in the sun outside his kraal, will find it difficult to credit any serious deterioration of race. This question is, however, one of those which admit of more accurate test than vague recollections, and casual observation of years gone by. If a few competent observers would carefully record the measurements and weights, as well as photographic portraits of typical specimens of the Kaffir population in well selected localities-such, for instance, as a tribe entirely removed from European habits and influences-a tribe in whose territory the trader, the missionary, and the European Colonist have been long established, and the communities of native workpeople at towns like Port Elizabeth, Durban, or Kimberley, they might establish a basis of sound facts for future comparison. Regarding the physical effects of European clothing on the natives who had been used to little clothing of any kind, and that worn loose like a blanket or kaross, there has been much controversy, and the leading theories and the few facts supporting them will be found recorded in some useful papers by Lovedale and other students and teachers, and in the religious periodicals to which they are in the habit of contributing. There can be no doubt that in South Africa, as in other countries where an uncivilized people used to scanty clothing have adopted close-fitting European garments, as a part and an evidence of civilization, there is a very general belief that the change often leads to an increase of pulmonary and other diseases. There can be little doubt of the fact that such increase of disease is observable and is easily accounted for, when, as often happens, the garments of European fashion are worn with little attention to European customs, and still less to European notions and rules of health in matters of clothing. The native wearer has been used to little, if any, tight fitting clothing. He buys a suit of close fitting woollen clothes such as are worn by -European workmen, and wears them partly as a matter of fashion, and partly because the police regulations require him to be decently clothed whenever he goes to work in town. He wears them all day, perhaps whilst hard at work, and during possibly a long hot fatiguing walk out to his own kraal ; arrived there he throws them off, and of course is exposed to the effects of a sudden chill ; or it some-