The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-09-07
ATTRIBUTED TO BEER
The Growing Increase of Girth in
the Men Of This
Country.
Original Types of Physiques Are
Said to Be Passing
Away.
The American People Are Becoming
Stout and the Blame or Credit
Is Laid OF Hops.

Recently a writer in the Boston Trans
cript stated on the authority of his tailor,
or perhaps a number of tailors, that the
southerners-supposed to mean southern
men-are growing bigger around the waist.
This increase of girth was declared to be,
on an average. an inch and a half, and it
was set down as an evidence of increasing
prosperity among the southern people. The
subject as denoting a physiological change
in the corporeal stature of the southern
people Is worth study, says the New Orleans
Pieayune. If suoh a change has taken
place it must be attributed to beer, not to
any cause spiritual or moral.
The original type of the American ply
sique is q body tall, slender and lean.
There is an absence of fat, the bone and
the Drawn alone being strongly developed.
This is the type of the American Indian,
and 1T was the type to which the white race
in America rapidly conformed. The first
settlers of the states, from New England to
Florida, were of the English type-English,
Scotch and Irish.
SO far from being of a slender figure
those people were stout and portly, like the
English of to-day. They came to the new
world with the bodies which the physical
forces and influences there had MADE for
them. but when those bodies began to be
operated on by the forces and influences
which they encountered here the immi-
grants succumbed to the natural law and
began to take on the type of the men of the
new world.
In the course of a couple OF centuries the
descendants of the English and Dutch and
German immigrants had become lean, slim
and bony. 1t was the type Of the men all
the way from New England to Georgia.
The prevailing caricaturs of "Uncle Sam"
of the Yankees, and the southsrner always
represented them tall, thin and gaunt, but
always vigorous and muscular. The Amer
leans are said to be- the most nervous pco.
pie in the world except the American In
dlans and the Arabs. These physical and
physiological conditions must be attributed
to the dryness of the American climate.
ON climate il unGuly dry, except OH the
Pacific aoRst.
The revolution of the planet on which we
live to the eaatward carries with il the vast
mass OF tie surrounding atmosphere. The
lofty ranges OF mountains along the wes-
tern coast OF all the and in our Hemisphere
cuts OH the moisture from the Pacific ocean
nh0 earscs it to fall on the Pacific slope
lbn9E and pour back into that sea, while
the vast interior of the continent is left
dry, much OF it being arid deserts. This
eastward drift Of air brings with it no
moisture, Hnd but for the gulf OF Mexico,
which pcnetratss 20 far into tho continent,
the greater part Of the country west of the
Mississippi river would be un%inhabitabl Bile,
On The contrary, this eastward drift of the
atmosphere carries vast loads of moisture
to Europe, and SO that continent far upon
the confines of Asia has 4 more moist eli
mate than that of America.
The rhyslolo2lsts have rightly attributed
the leanness of the Americana, aboriginal
and aEsimilated, to the excessive dryness.