The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

The mouth of the Negro presents another character which seems to me to have been generally neglected, and which has always struck me. It is a kind of clamminess at the outer border of the commissures, and which seems to prevent the small movements of the corner of the mouth which play such an important part in the physiognomy. The dissections of M. Hamy have explained these facts. They have shown that in the Negroes the muscles of this region are both more developed and less distinct than in the Whites.

Independently of the colour of the iris, the eye also exhibits differences which constitute so many characters, having at times a real value in the development of the eyelids, and in the dimensions of the palpebral fissure. Everyone knows Chinese eyes, which slope from below upwards, and from inwards outwards. They have been regarded as peculiar to Yellow races, whether pure or mixed. Nevertheless these oblique eyes are found pretty frequently in Europe, principally among women, and are united to a fairness and freshness of colour which are almost exceptional, as well as to features unanimously regarded as most pleasing.

The general form of the countenance, and some other peculiarities drawn from the prominence of the cheek bones, from the form and prominence or retreat of the chin, etc., favoured some considerations analogous to the preceding. But here again the external characters are wanting in the precision which we shall find in the osteological characters.

X. Characters drawn from the trunk and limbs. When speaking of proportions I have already pointed out some of these characters; I will return to them when speaking of the skeleton. I will here only make a few remarks, and point out two remarkable features.

One of the peculiarities, which, in our European eyes, chiefly contribute to bodily beauty, is the width of the chest, of the waist, and of the hips. A body of a uniform breadth we consider ungraceful. It is a feature which is met with among several yellow and American races. The comparison of these dimensions will furnish indices which it is interesting to compare. But we have only taken that of the chest, or more generally its circumference. To judge from the numbers given by various authors, the Negroes of Fernando Po would have the most fully developed chest. With them, its circumference would be 95·2 c.m. (37·48 inches). The English would come next, and the minimum observed would be among the Todas, whose thorax would only have a circumference of 81·8 c.m. (32·2 inches).

The Hottentot, and especially the Bosjesman women, exhibit, in a high degree, two peculiarities, which have for a long time been considered special to them, but which have been met with elsewhere: I mean steatopygia and the Hottentot’s apron (tablier). The first consists of a strange development of the fatty folds in the buttocks, from which results an enormous protuberance. The Hottentot Venus, of which a model exists in the Paris Museum, gives a good example of it, but it appears that this character can be still more exaggerated. It is the reproduction in man of a feature noticed by Pallas as characteristic of certain races of sheep of Central Asia, among which the atrophy of the tail coincides with the appearance of enormous fatty protuberances.

Steatopygia has been noticed among various black and Negröid populations. It was very noticeable in a queen of Poun, figured upon the Egyptian temple built by M. Mariette, for the Exhibition of 1867. Livingstone assured us that it had begun to manifest itself among certain women of the Boers, who are nevertheless of a quite pure white race. But nowhere is it so pronounced as among the Bosjesman women, and it constitutes one of the most striking characters of the race.

It is not exactly the same with “tablier,” resulting from the exaggerated development of the labia minora, which project out of the vulva and hang down in front of the thighs. This feature is found more or less developed in a number of races, and has given rise to the practice of circumcision among women. In Europe there is doubtless scarcely an accoucheur who has not noticed it on some occasion in some perfectly pure Whites. Nevertheless it seems that among the Bosjesman women it sometimes reaches a development which is not noticed elsewhere. In the Hottentot Venus, of which the Paris Museum possesses a model, the length from the right reaches 55 millimetres (2·16 inches), and from the left 61 millimetres (2·4 inches); the breadth is 34 millimetres (1·33 inch) from the right, and from the left 32 millimetres (1·26 inch). The thickness, which is uniform, is 15 millimetres (·58 inch).