PROGNATHOUS STOCK. 295 



doubly remarkable. Their figure, though small, is not ill-proportioned ; 

 and they would not be ugly if they had more flesh : yet the men may be 

 called handsome, in comparison with the women. The loose hanging 

 breasts, and the disproportionate thickness of the hinder parts, united 

 with their ugly features, make them, to Europeans, disgusting. The Hot- 

 tentot women, though resembling the Bushmen, are, from their greater 

 height, and better-proportioned limbs, in comparison with them, handsome." 

 Their colour is dirty yellow, and their hair resembles that of the Hottentots. 

 Hunted down like wild beasts, the Bushman tribes seek refuge in the desert, 

 dwelling in low huts, or excavations in the ground, or in natural fissures 

 or cavities among the rocks : concealed in these retreats, they endeavour 

 to escape observation, and watch the moment, in which to discharge their 

 poisoned arrows against the unwary intruder, whom they have been taught 

 to regard as necessarily their enemy. The acuteness of their sight almost 

 exceeds belief ; and they are subtle and active in the pursuit of game. 

 Their usual dress consists of the kaross, or sheep-skin mantle ; but they 

 are fond of ornaments, such as beads and metal rings. 



The females, both of the Hottentot and Bushman tribes, are alike 

 conspicuous for the fatty protuberance which covers the haunches and 

 sacrum, reminding us of certain breeds of sheep found in Asia and 

 Africa. This appendage, the development of which is not easy to ac- 

 count for, and which does not take place until after the first pregnancy, 

 is elastic and tremulous, and vibrates at every step. Cuvier, who 

 examined its structure in the Bushman female, known under the name of 

 the Hottentot Venus, who died at Paris in 1815, observes, that it consists 

 of fat, traversed in various directions by strong cellular threads, and is 

 easily removed from the glutaei muscles. An examination of the same 

 individual enabled M. Cuvier to investigate the nature of that structural 

 enlargement so often alluded to by anatomists, and described by Le 

 Vaillant, Sennerat, Barrow, and others, as an unvarying peculiarity in 

 the Hottentot female ; but which, in reality, is not universal, at least, in 

 a conspicuous degree, being only considerable in some of the Bushman 

 females ; a statement, however, contrary to the assertion of Barrow. 



The projection of the jaws, and the obliquity of the incisor teeth, are 

 by no means constant characters in the Hottentot or Bushman skull ; 

 and in Blumenbach's specimen,, the skull differed not in these peculiarities 

 from the European. 



The similarity of the Hottentot physiognomy to that of the Mon- 

 gole, noticed by Cuvier, has been remarked by other writers. Barrow, 

 indeed, perceived the resemblance which the Hottentots bear to the 

 Chinese and other nations with broad and flat-faced skulls, in which the 

 prominence of the malar bones and boldness of the zygomatic arches are 

 considerable. The size of the foramen magnum, compared with the same 



