744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



into the hereditary. Similarly in some cases where a doubly com- 

 pound society is formed. Further, this later-established power of a 

 supreme ruler, at first given by election and presently growing heredi- 

 tary, is commonly less than that of the local rulers in their own locali- 

 ties ; and where it becomes greater it is usually by the help of ascribed 

 divine descent or ascribed divine commission. 



Where, in virtue of supposed supernatural origin or authority, the 

 king has become absolute, and, owning both subjects and territory, 

 exercises all powers, he is obliged by the multiplicity of his affairs to 

 depute his powers. There follows a reactive restraint due to the po- 

 litical machinery he creates ; and this machinery ever tends to become 

 too strong for him. Especially where rigorous adhesion to the rule of 

 inheritance brings incapables to the throne, or where ascribed divine 

 nature causes inaccessibility save through agents, or where both causes 

 conspire, power passes into the hands of deputies. The legitimate 

 ruler becomes an automaton and his chief agent the real ruler, who, 

 in some cases passing through parallel stages, himself becomes an 

 automaton and his subordinates the rulers. 







THE BLACK KACES OF OCEANICA.* 



By Dr. E. VEENEAU. 



""^TEGRO forms are figured among the earliest representations of 

 --^ men on ancient monuments. As early as the eighteenth dynasty 

 (seventeen hundred years before the Christian era), the artists of Egypt 

 represented at least five races of negroes. Nigritic types were also 

 figured by the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, 

 although none of those people had as extended knowledge of Africa as 

 the Egyptians had. The examination of all the monuments which 

 have come down from antiquity makes it evident that the negro races 

 of Africa and Asia were well known. Scientific investigations of negro 

 characteristics began to be made in the sixteenth century. The first 

 to record one was Albert Diirer, who, in 1525, drew a profile of a 

 negro inclosed in a system of lines, of which an oblique and an horizon- 

 tal line formed at their junction a real facial angle. MM. de Quatre- 

 fages and Hamy, in their " Crania Ethnica," begin the study of the 

 negro races with the negroes of Oceanica, and select as their point of 

 departure the Negritos, the most brachycephalic race. The Negrito 

 race proper, which was first observed in the Philippine Islands, has 

 been found in the interior of the Peninsula of Malacca, the Sunda Isl- 

 ands, and the Andaman Islands. M. Hamy has been able to trace it 

 even to the interior of India. 



* Translated from the French by W. H. Larrabee. 



