IQ2 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



the white race, as a whole, has advanced further than the black, 

 will be no more denied by thoughtful negroes than by the average 

 man of to-day would be denied the superior physical perfection 

 of, e. g., the type of the Apollo Belvedere. 



But, in the first place, upon several occasions, Wyman took 

 pains to specify that, in respect to the location of the foramen 

 magnum (the orifice at the base of the skull through which the 

 brain is continuous with the spinal cord), the North American 

 Indians are more ape-like than the Africans. 1 



In the second place, the same paragraph quoted above from 

 his gorilla paper contains the following emphatic declarations: 

 "Any anatomist who will take the trouble to compare the skeletons 

 of the Negro and the Orang, cannot fail to be struck at sight with 

 the wide gap which separates them. The difference between the 

 cranium, the pelvis, and the conformation of the upper extremities 

 in the Negro and the Caucasian, sinks into comparative insig- 

 nificance when compared with the vast difference which exists 

 between the conformation of the same parts in the Negro and the 

 Orang." A similar remark is made in his later paper on the 

 Hottentot, B. S. N. H., Proceedings, December i6th, 1863. 



We may imagine the scorn with which Wyman would have 

 repudiated the implication of a novelist that an intelligent person 

 could not distinguish between the skull of a gorilla and that of a 

 negro. 2 



Wyman's trusted janitor, Clary, was a dark mulatto. During 

 the Civil War, the action of the United States paymaster in offer- 

 ing, at first, the Massachusetts regiments of colored troops the 

 wages of laborers instead of the pay of soldiers, as had been prom- 

 ised, 3 was vigorously condemned by Wyman in a letter dated 



1 Observations on Crania, Boston Society of Natural History Proceedings, 

 vol. II, April i5th, 1858; reprint, p. 14; also November 20, 1867, pp. 322-323. 



2 For the later qualification of this implication and for some comparisons 

 between African and Caucasian brains see the writer's address, "The 

 Brain of the American Negro." Proceedings of The Annual Conference 

 of The National Negro Committee for igog. 



3 This incident was related by me in an address, "Two Examples of the 

 Negro's Courage, Physical and Moral," at the Garrison Centenary in Boston, 



