CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



antiquity of races. In India, the darker races 

 are the oldest, and the dark races of the Malay 

 Archipelago inhabit the remains of a continent 

 probably older than that of Asia. Professor Lay- 

 cock of Edinburgh, in his oral lectures on the 

 practice of medicine, has lately advanced an ingen- 

 ious theory of skin-pigmentation. The pigment 

 consists of carbonaceous matter, and the skin is 

 an excretory organ ; he therefore thinks that where 

 the lungs, as excretors of carbon, are not equal to 

 the demands made on them by the system, as we 

 might suppose the case in hot climates, the skin 

 comes in to aid them, and a vicarious excretion of 

 carbon goes on, through the agency of the epi- 

 dermal cells, resulting in the deposit of black 

 pigment in these structures. It is assumed by 

 some that the black skin of the Negro gives him 

 an advantage in a hot climate. But if the Negro 

 derives advantage from his skin, it is not because 

 of its colour ; for it is now known though the 

 contrary was long believed that two surfaces of 

 the same material, the one black and the other 

 white, radiate heat equally. When exposed naked 

 to the sun, the Negro must feel the colour of his 

 skin a disadvantage ; for black absorbs bright rays 

 better than white does. The advantage of the 

 Negro lies in the more vigorous excretory power 

 of his skin, and its freer perspiration, which pro- 

 duces cooling. The Negro at birth is not black, 

 but light gray or brown. The skin of the Negro 

 emits a most disagreeable odour, which in some 

 can be smelt at a great distance, and in others is 

 not very perceptible. Foissac says it corresponds 

 to the smell characteristic of black feathers of 

 birds, and black hair of the dogs -in New Guinea. 

 We have no evidence of an aboriginal black race 

 having ever existed in Europe, or of a white race 

 having ever existed in Africa, In Asia and Africa, 

 apes and men manifest similar peculiarities as 

 regards colour of skin. 



The hair is an appendage of the skin ; its 

 pigment is of the same sort, and is not con- 

 fined to the pith of the hair, for hairs without 

 pith possess pigment In the hair of red-haired 

 people, traces of sulphur may be discovered by 

 analysis. Hair varies much in form and appear- 

 ance, as well as colour sometimes exhibiting a 

 circular, or an oval, or a flattened transverse 

 section. In some races, it is long and straight ; 

 in others, short and crisp, like wool. It usually, 

 but not always, is of greater length in the female. 

 In most races, it is scanty on the face and body ; 

 in some, almost absent, except on the scalp and 

 eyebrows. When hair is developed to any great 

 extent on the limbs, it is curious to note that the 

 points of the hairs of the arm and fore-arm are 

 directed to the elbow, and those of the leg and 

 thigh slope away from the knee as in the 

 anthropomorphic apes. 



The colour of the eye usually corresponds with 

 that of the hair though not always light- 

 coloured eyes being associated, as a rule, with 

 a fair complexion the exceptions being most 

 numerous in what are called mixed races. 



Albinos, Prichard and the old ethnologists held 

 to be mere morbid products of humanity ; and in 

 cases where dark-skinned people got their colour 

 blanched by disease, examples of which we find 

 amongst the Tatars and natives of Malabar, the 

 opinion was tenable enough. But the albino 

 Australian described by Bennett in his Wander- 



8 



ings in New South Wales, i. 437, who had flaxen 

 hair, light-blue eyes, and white skin, with oc- 

 casional black spots, can be no more a ' morbid 

 product ' than a piebald pony is one. Albinism of 

 this sort is now held to be an individual variation 

 from the racial type, which, though not at all 

 morbid, being out of harmony with external cir- 

 cumstances, rarely becomes permanent; except 

 in the Isthmus of Darien, where albinos are said 

 to be so numerous as to have been described by 

 Coreal (Voy. aux hides Occ, vol. ii. p. 140) as a 

 distinct race. In white races, albinos have red- 

 dish eyes and white hair ; the want of pigment in 

 the lining membrane of the eye rendering the red 

 blood-vessels that play upon it visible, and greatly 

 impairing the capacity of the organ for absorbing 

 light The eyes in most European races are set 

 horizontally in the sockets. In the Chinese and 

 Tatar races, they are set obliquely, the inner angle 

 being depressed, and the outer elevated. 



Voice. 



Very recently, Sir D. Gibb, M.D. drew attention 

 to the varying character of the voice in different 

 races a subject that had been hitherto greatly 

 overlooked. It would appear that, as we proceed 

 from east to west, the power of the voice tends 

 to increase. The Chinese have a voice feeble in 

 power and compass, its peculiarity being a whin- 

 ing metallic twang. In the races inhabiting 

 Tatary, Tibet, and Mongolia, the voice is strong 

 and loud, though it still has a slight metallic 

 twang. In India and Burmah, the voice is soft 

 and womanly, shrill rather than strong the hill 

 tribes having stronger voices than the dwellers on 

 the plains ; in the Negro, the voice is bellowing and 

 noisy, rather than powerful ; it is also indistinct 

 and husky. The Europeans have most powerful 

 sonorous voices, the Germans having the strong- 

 est of all, being in this respect excelled by the 

 Tatars only, who have the most powerful voices 

 in the Old World. It is remarkable that in both 

 nations short broad skulls (brachycephaly) prevail 

 The American Indians excel even the Tatars in 

 vocal power. The Hottentots have peculiar ' clicks' 

 in their speech (which, by the way, Van der Kemp 

 differentiated into six distinct speech-sounds). 

 Sir D. Gibb is hardly justified in describing this 

 as a racial peculiarity, for it is not an inherent 

 one. Hottentot children, reared amongst the 

 whites, on returning to their savage home, can as 

 little acquire the art of ' clicking ' as the mission- 

 aries (Waitz, Int. Anthrop. vol. i. p. 136). The 

 Eskimos are said to have remarkable powers of 

 ventriloquism. 



It is probable these variations in vocal powers 

 are due to, as yet, unstudied or unnoticed struc- 

 tural variations in the larynx peculiar to different 

 races. In the Negro, for example, the peculiar 

 position of the larynx prevents the tones of the 

 voice from reverberating so well as they do in the 

 cavern-shaped ventricles of the vocal apparatus in 

 the European ; and the shallowness of the larynx 

 characteristic of the Chinese may cause their 

 voices to assume an effeminate type. 



Trunk and Extremities. 



In the Bushmen, especially in the females, enor- 

 mous deposits of fat are observed on the buttocks. 

 Cuvier compared these cushions of fat to similar 

 formations in female monkeys (Mandrills), but 



