The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1891-10-23
GROWING IN GIR,rH.
Why 1t Is That Americans Are
Becoming Stouter.
Original Types of Physique Passing
Away = Beer Drinking Said to
DO Responsible for the
Chungo.

recently writer in the Boston Tran.
script stated on the authority of his
tailor, or perhaps number of tailors,
that the outherners-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 half, and it was set down
as an evidence of increasing prosperity
among the southern people.
Tho subject as denoting n distinct
physiological change IN the corporeal
stature of the southern people is worth
study, says the New Orleans Picayune.
If such q change has taken place it
must be attributed to beer. not to any
cause spiritual or moral.
The original type of tho American
physique is 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 it was the
type to which the white race in Amer
lea rapidly conformcd. The first set
tiers of the states, from New England
to Florida, were of tho English type
English, Scotch and Irish.
$50 far from being of slender figure.
those people were stout and portly, like
the English of to-day. They came to
the new world with the bodies which
tho 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 immigrants sue
cumbed to tho natural law and began
to take on the type of tho men of the
new world.
In the course of n couple of centuries
tho descendants of the English and
Dutch and German immigrants had be-
come lean, slim and bony. II was the
type of the men all the way from New
England to Georgia. Tho prevailing
caricatures of Uncle Sam" of tho
Yankee and the southcrncr always rep
resented them as tall, thin and gaunt,
but always vigorous and muscular
The Americans are said to be the most
nervous people in the world, except the
American Indians and the Arabs These
physical and physiological conditions
must be attributed to the dryness of
the American climate. Our climate is
unduly dry, except on the Pacific coast
The revolution of the planet on which
we live to the eastward carries with it
the vast mass of the surrounding at
mosphere. The lofty ranges of noun
tains along the western coast of all the
land in our hemisphere cuts off the
moisture from the Pacific ocean and
causes it to fall on the Pacific slope
lands and pour back into that sea,
while tho vast interior of the continent
Is left dry, much of it being arid deserts
This eastward drift of air brings with
1T no moisture, and but for the gulf of
Mexico, which pcnctrates so far into
tho continent, the greater part of the
country west of the Mississippi river
would be uninhabitable. On the con-
trary, this eastward drift of the atmos-
phere carries vast loads of moisture to
Europe, and so that continent far upon
the confines of Asia has more moist
climate than that Of America.
Tho Psychologists have rightly ut
tributed the leanness of the Americans,
aboriginal and assimilated, to this ex-
cessivc dryncss. Now, within half
century, the introduction and rapid
diffusion and increase in the use of
beer as beverage has begun to work
remarkable change. AS far as the
human form is concerned it is equiva-
lent to making the climate less dry.
Under its influence the people are get
ting stouter. New Orleans is the cen
ter of an extensive manufacture and
distribution of beer, and the beverage
is made and consumed in all parts of
the south, where its use is as much the
rule as in the west. No wonder the
southcrners are growing in girth.
This is tho simple truth of the mat
ter. The American people are becom-
ing stout, and beer is the cause of it.
About Nosos.
There are those now who pretend to