Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/470

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES.

By JAMES COLLIER.

II—EMIGRATION.

EMIGRATION is a continual regenesis of colonies, and in its latest stages exhibits all the phenomena that belong to the beginnings of societies. It answers closely to the genesis of the individual organism in particulars not previously mentioned. It is a mere extension of the migrations of animals, which project light on it, as it reflects light on them. And it recapitulates the movements that peopled the countries whence it proceeds. Guided by this triple clew, let us explore its myriad facts. They may be conveniently distributed under the principal Aristotelian categories. Whence, by whom, and of what sort, when, why, how, and whither has emigration taken place? Which are the emigrating races? At what point in its history does a nation throw off a colony? What are the characteristics of the emigrating type? What are the classes, religions, and professions, and which chiefly the sex, that swell the stream? What are their motives for leaving the old and seeking a new country? Under what circumstances and by what agencies is emigration carried out, and in what direction does it move?—these are the questions to be answered.

I. It is the brilliant generalization of Weismann (with which his view of the intransmissibleness of acquired characters seems to have no necessary connection) that the substance of every species consists of a web of germinal protoplasm that is continuous from one generation to another—a warp whereon the lives of individuals are as patterns woven. We might similarly conceive the migrating (destined, when they reach the sea, to become the emigrating) races as forming a continuous emigrating chain or cable, unbroken from the departure of the first migratory band to the sailing of the last emigrant ship, splitting on this side and that into independent strands, but each containing the ferment of the movement that has carried civilization round the globe. The Carthaginians inherited a double portion of the Phœnician colonizing spirit. The Greek colonies gave birth to others which, like Massalia, Syracuse, Sybaris, Corcyra, and Andros, were more colonizing than themselves. England, the progenitor of a hundred peoples, is a Teutonic and Scandinavian colony. Massachusetts was the mother of a cluster of New England States, and Virginia of many of the Southern States. Two great colonies have sprung from the loins of New South Wales; two others from two New Zealand settlements; and both countries