PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 549 



you cau convince yourself, as I have often done during my rides in 

 the omnibus. 



Judging by the crania that we possess, prognathism is characteristic 

 of a population incontestably European which lives at the south of 

 the Baltic, the Esthonians. This people is, furthermore, the remains 

 of the most ancient race of Western Europe. It is this race, without 

 doubt, wlrich, mixing its blood with new-comers, has left in the midst 

 of our great cities those indications of a prognathous race to which I 

 have just referred. 



After studying the cranium and face separately, we must examine 

 the head in its ensemble. From this also we draw important charac- 

 ters. I will only mention one, which has a certain real value, but the 

 signification of which some have exaggerated and falsified. 



Camper, an anatomist of Holland, studied comparatively the Greek 

 and Roman medallions and statues, and struck with the air of majesty, 

 presented by the Greeks, gave for a reason that the facial angle was 

 greater than in the Romans. This angle is formed by two lines which 

 meet at the extremity of the front teeth, and of which one passes by 

 the middle of the orifice of the ear, while the second is tangent to the 

 forehead. 



Pushing these researches much further, Camper believed that he 

 discovered a regular decrease of the facial angle in the human race, so 

 that he could characterize a race by its facial angle. Going further, 

 and applying it to animals, he placed in a descending scale, man, 

 monkeys, carnivora, birds, all characterized by smaller and smaller 

 angles. Whence, to conclude that the facial angle measures, so to say, 

 the intelligence, is but a step, which was taken without hesitation. 



As this conclusion gives great interest to the measurement of the 

 facial angle, many processes and many instruments have been proposed 

 to obtain it with all possible exactitude. The goniometre, invented by 

 my assistant M. Docteur Jacquart, attained this end better than any 

 other. 



Jacquart did not stop with making this instrument. He used it ; 

 and, in a beautiful work, he shows among other things that the right 

 angle exists in the white race, contrary to what Camper believed ; 

 that we may observe it, without doubt, in intelligent persons, but who 

 are, however, not sensibly superior to others whose angle is much less 

 considerable. The facial angle cannot, then, be considered as measur- 

 ing the intelligence, the reach of the mind. 



M. Jacquart shows, besides, that, in the single population of Paris, 

 the angular differences of which we are speaking are much more con- 

 siderable than those that Camper regarded as characterizing races. 

 He shows that here, again, there is from race to race that entanglement 

 of characters which I have so many times pointed out. Yet, here as 

 elsewhere, the average furnishes good characters to determine human 

 groups. 



