The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

There is also something characteristic in the form of the hair taken as a whole. Everyone knows the falsely called woolly head of the Negro, which is covered with very short and crisp hair. The very long and harsh hair of yellow, American, and other populations, contrasts in a striking manner with the preceding. That of the white races, which is frequently curly, almost takes the mean between these two extremes.

This general aspect ordinarily corresponds with the differences of structure and general form of the hair. Brown has already proved that a horizontal section of the hair varies from an elongated ellipse with the Negro, to a circle with the Red-Skin, and that the hair of the Anglo-Saxon is a mean between the two. Pruner Bey has resumed this study, and described the form of a horizontal section of the hair in several races belonging to the three fundamental types. He has proved that the elongated ellipse characterises Negro races in general, as well as the Hottentot-Bosjesman; that the oval forms belong essentially to Aryan populations; that more or less regularly circular forms characterise yellow, American, and other races, and that in this respect the allophylian white races (Basques) appear to resemble the preceding.

Brown and Pruner Bey moreover agree in the statement that a mixture of forms is found upon the heads of half-breeds. Exactly the same often happens in the crossing of the merino with races of sheep with a coarse wool.

I have hitherto only spoken of the characters furnished by the beard and the hair when grown freely. But it is well known that the love of adornment, one of the most characteristic instincts of man, endeavours to modify nature in these two directions. This results in characters, which are doubtless artificial, but which have sometimes a real value. This side of the question has often been attacked, and M. E. Cortambert has made it the object of a work, in which he has given a summary of the work of his predecessors in addition to his own.

IX. Characters of the cranium and of the face. From the point of view of descriptive anthropology as well as from an anatomical point of view, the head is composed essentially of two regions, the cranium and the face. The former is covered solely by the hairy skin which follows all its contours, and it in reality therefore only presents osteological characters. The general form, proportions, etc., are almost the same in the living man as in the skeleton. I will therefore go into greater detail upon this subject when treating of the latter. Here 1 will only remark that the inequality of the skin and of some subjacent muscular fibres necessitates some corrections in the comparison of measurements taken from the living head and from the skull. For example, the presence of the temporal muscles increases to a sufficiently sensible extent the transverse maximum diameter. Consequently the ratio of the latter to the anterio-posterior diameter becomes raised. This ratio, which constitutes the cephalic index, is one of the characters which anthropologists employ most frequently, and it was important to determine the correction to be made in case of comparison. Broca has shown that it is two units when the ratio is expressed in the manner which I shall mention further on.

The case is different with the face. Here the super-imposed soft parts play a part of which the importance has been alternately exaggerated or neglected. William Edwards considered that races should be determined, as we judge of individuals, solely by the facial characters. Serres, starting from the fact that the bony framework determines the general form and the proportion of the face, required that osteological characters only should be taken into account. Both were too exclusive.

Doubtless the skeleton is important in the most superficial characters of the face. But the muscles, the cellular and adipose tissue, and the cartilages are much more developed on the face than upon the cranium; and from their greater or less extension, from their various relations, differences of feature result which constitute so many characters. Unfortunately it is often very difficult to define the latter. The most detailed descriptions are rarely sufficient, and the most exact measurements are far from giving an idea of certain variations of the human figure. For example, they cannot make the difference intelligible, which is nevertheless very sensible to the eye, which distinguishes the nose of a negro of Guinea from that of a Nubian negro.

The nose is nevertheless one of the features of the face which is best adapted for investigations of this kind. Its length is determined by the point of attachment of the nasal bones to the frontal bone and the position of the nasal spine; its breadth at the bridge depends upon the angle formed by the nasal bones; its breadth at the base is more or less related to the anterior opening of the nasal fossæ. But the form and development of the cartilages, as well as the thickness of the nostrils upon two very similar skulls, can modify considerably the type itself of this organ; and the exterior nasal index can give no idea of these variations. The study of Topinard upon this subject, nevertheless, possesses a real interest; but from the point of view of the characterisation of races, the researches made by Broca upon the nasal osteological index, which we will discuss further on, has a much more important value.

The characters drawn from the nose, which are observed upon the living body, are however most important. This organ is more or less pressed in, broad and flat among almost all Negroes, the greater part of the Yellow races, and certain allophylian Whites; it is on the contrary narrow and prominent in fair white races. These two general types moreover present variations of which drawings only can give any idea.

I may say the same with reference to the mouth. The thousand differences of form and dimensions which it can exhibit, from the negro of Guinea with his enormous and, as it were turned up lips, to certain aryan or semitic Whites can neither be measured nor described. We can only point out the general characters when they become very pronounced. It may, however, be remarked that the thickness of the lips is very marked among all negroes, in consequence of their projection in front of the maxillary bones and the teeth.