MAN AS THE TYPE OF A DISTINCT ORDER. 207 



still continued among the Columbian tribes, and is also practised by 

 the Caribs of St. Vincent's.* 



However ape-like these distorted skulls may be (and the observation 

 applies also to the deformed skulls of idiots), they are not to be regarded 

 as indications of any natural approximation to the Simiae. 



A distinction between the skulls of all nations and those of the Simiae, 

 upon which much of the character of the human face depends, and which 

 is not destitute of importance, may here be noticed ; namely, the eleva- 

 tion, in Man, of the nasal bones, which form the bridge of the nose ; 

 while, in the Simiae, -j" the nasal bone (for it is single) lies flat and 

 depressed. 



Soemmerring, Camper, and Vrolik, have endeavoured to prove that, 

 in the pelvis of the Negro, there is an approximation, in its form, to the 

 lower Mammalia ; a degradation in type, imparted, as Dr. Vrolik ob- 

 serves, " by the vertical direction of the ossa ilii ; the elevation of the 

 ilia at the posterior and upper tuberosities ; the greater proximity of 

 the anterior and upper spines ; the smaller breadth of the sacrum ; the 

 smaller extent of the haunches ; the smaller distance from the upper 

 edge of the articulation of the pelvis, and the projection of the sacrum, or 

 the shortness of the conjugate diameter ; the smallness of the transverse 

 diameters at the spines and tuberosities of the ischium, and the length- 

 ened form which the pelvis derives from these peculiarities. "J All these 

 characters, as he says, recal to mind the conformation of the pelvis in the 

 Simiae ; the elongated shape of the pelvis being, in fact, the character on 

 which this approximation is assumed to depend. To judge by the 

 skeleton of the female of the Bushman tribe, who died at Paris, in 1815, 

 the pelvis, according to Dr. Vrolik, is inferior to that of the Negro, as 

 evidenced by the vertical direction, the length, and narrowness of the ilia. 



* Cox, in his Travels on the Columbia River, thus describes the method by which the singular 

 flatness and elongation of the skull are produced : " Immediately after birth, the infant is placed in a 

 kind of oblong cradle, formed like a trough, with moss under it. One end, on which the head reposes, 

 is more elevated than the rest. A padding is then placed on the forehead, with a piece of cedar 

 bark over it, and, by means of cords passed through small holes on each side of the cradle, the 

 padding is pressed against the head. It is kept in this manner upwards of a year ; and the pro- 

 cess is not, I believe, attended with much pain. The appearance of the infant, however, while in 

 this state of compression, is frightful ; and its little black eyes, forced out by the tightness of the 

 bandages, resemble those of a Mouse choked in a trap. When released from this inhuman process, 

 the head is perfectly flattened, and the upper part of it seldom exceeds an inch in thickness. It 

 never afterwards recovers its rotundity. They deem this an essential point of beauty ; and the most 

 devoted adherent to our first Charles never entertained a stronger aversion to a round-head than 

 these savages." 



t Simia, from simus, flat-nosed ; and not from similis, like, or similo, to counterfeit. Hence, sima, 

 a rounded or blunt pillar; and simo, any person, or animal, with a flat nose. 



t Vrolik has remarked, that "the pelvis of the male Negro, in the strength and density of its sub- 

 stance, and of the bones which compose it, resembles the pelvis of a wild beast ; while, on the contrary, 

 the pelvis of the female, in the same race, combines lightness of substance, and delicacy of form and 

 structure ; insomuch that, though the pelvis of the male and female presents, among Europeans, 

 marked differential characters, it does not exhibit such extraordinary differences as obtain in the Negro 



