DIFFERENTIAL CHARACTERS FORM OF LIMBS. 905 



839. Other variations have been observed by anatomists, between the dif- 

 ferent races of Mankind, in the relative length of the bones, and in the 

 shape of the limbs; but these also seem to have reference to the degree of 

 civilization, and to the regularity of the supply of wholesome nutriment. It 

 is generally to be observed that the races least improved by civilization, like 

 the uncultivated breeds of animals, have slender, lean, and elongated limbs; 

 this may be especially remarked in the natives of Australia. In nearly all 

 the less civilized races of Men, the limbs are more crooked and badly-formed 

 than the average of those of Europeans; and this is particularly the case in 

 the Negro, the bones of whose legs bow outwards, and whose feet are re- 

 markably flat. It has been generally believed that the length of the fore- 

 arm in the Negro is so much greater than in the European, as to constitute 

 a real character of approximation to the Apes. The difference, however, is 

 in reality extremely slight, and is not at all comparable with that which 

 exists between the most uncultivated races of Men and in the highest Apes 

 ( 27). And in regard to all the peculiarities here alluded to. it is to be 

 observed that they can only be discovered by the comparison of large num- 

 bers of one race with corresponding numbers of another ; for individuals are 

 found in every tribe, possessing the characters which distinguish the majority 

 of the other race. Such peculiarities, therefore, are totally useless as the 

 foundation of specific characters ; being simply variations from the ordinary 

 type, resulting from causes which might affect the entire race as well as in- 

 dividuals. The connection between the general form of the body, on the 

 one hand, and the degree of civilization (involving the regular supply of 

 nutriment) on the other, is made apparent, not merely by the improvement 

 which we perceive in the form, development, and vigor of the frame, as we 

 advance from the lowest to the most cultivated of the Human races; but 

 also by the degradation that is occasionally to be met with in particular 

 groups of the higher tribes, which have been subjected for several genera- 

 tions to the influence of depressing causes. Of such degradation, occurring 

 under circumstances that permit its successive steps to be traced, we have a 

 remarkable example in the conversion of certain tribes of the Hottentot race 

 into Bushmen ( 854) ; and there is very strong ground for the belief that 

 similar influences have operated at a more remote period, in the production 

 of the peculiar characters of the Guinea-coast Negroes and Australian Bush- 

 men. 



840. Independently, however, of the obvious modifying influence of ex- 

 ternal circumstances, much allowance must be made for that tendency to 

 variation, which presents itself, more or less, in all those races of animals, 

 which possess such a constitutional capability of adaptation to changes in 

 climate, habits of life, etc., as enables them to live and flourish under a 

 variety of conditions. Thus we find that the offspring of any one pair of 

 domesticated animals do not all precisely agree among themselves, or with 

 their parents, either in bodily conformation or in psychical character; but 

 that individual differences, as they are termed, exist among them. Now, as 

 this tendency to variation cannot be clearly traced to any influence of ex- 

 ternal circumstances, it is commonly distinguished by the terra " spontane- 

 ous;" but as there is no effect without a cause, and as the widest differences 

 of this kind present themselves in those races which are most obviously 

 amenable to the influence of external conditions, we seem justified in at- 

 tributing them to agencies operating unosteusibly upon the parents, either 

 previously to their intercourse, or at the time of coition ( 768), or in the 

 female during the period of uterogestatiou ( 771). The difference between 

 wild and domesticated animals in regard to color affords a very good illus- 

 tration of this general fact ; for the uniformity among the former is no less 



