The rule can therefore safely be laid down that in all investigation of geographic influences upon the permanent physical characteristics of races, the geographic distribution of these should be left out of consideration till the last, since it so easily misleads.[67] Moreover, owing to the ceaseless movements of mankind, these effects do not remain confined to the region that produced them, but pass on with the wandering throng in whom they have once developed, and in whom they endure or vanish according as they prove beneficial or deleterious in the new habitat.
[Sidenote: Psychical effects.] II.

More varied and important are the psychical effects of geographic environment.

As direct effects they are doubtless bound up in many physiological modifications; and as influences of climate, they help differentiate peoples and races in point of temperament.

They are reflected in man's religion and his literature, in his modes of thought and figures of speech.

Blackstone states that "in the Isle of Man, to take away a horse or ox was no felony, but a trespass, because of the difficulty in that little territory to conceal them or to carry them off; but to steal a pig or a fowl, which is easily done, was a capital misdemeanour, and the offender punished with death." The judges or deemsters in this island of fishermen swore to execute the laws as impartially "as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the fish."[68] The whole mythology of the Polynesians is an echo of the encompassing ocean.