MAN. 191 



naturalists in a certain number of groups that are called 

 races. The distinctions between these races are prin- 

 cipally in the physical characters and in the manners of 

 life and languages. 



Among the physical characters, the more important 

 are the structure of the cranium, the form of the face, 

 and the size of the facial angle. The facial angle is 

 obtained by drawing two straight lines, one from the 

 auditory canal to the base of the nose, the other from 

 the frontal protuberance to the most prominent point in 

 front of the upper jaw. This angle is more and more 

 open as the anterior part of the forehead is more devel- 

 oped and the jaws less prominent. Ordinarily there is 

 a constant relation between the development of the 

 anterior portion of the skull and that of the brain, and 

 a large brain generally corresponds to highly-developed 

 intellectual faculties ; consequently a comparison of the 

 facial angle in the different races may throw some light 

 on the relative intelligence of these races, and some sort 

 of comparison may be made between them and the 

 animals most nearly related to man. There has thus 

 been constructed for the human species a sort of pro- 

 gressive scale, of which the white race occupies the 

 highest position. 



The facial angle in the white race has an average 

 between eighty and eighty-five degrees ; in some indi- 

 viduals it is greater than a right angle. The ancients 

 understood the value of the facial angle as an indication 

 of intelligence, and they exaggerated it in the statues of 

 their divinities. In the Apollo Belvedere it is nearly 

 ninety-five, and in the Olympian Jupiter nearly one 

 hundred degrees. In the Negro, the facial angle has an 

 average of sixty-five to seventy degrees, and in some of 



