PROGNATHOUS STOCK. 301 



can be adduced of nations, or tribes, of other races assuming the Negro 

 type. A darker hue, indeed, has, doubtless, in some cases, taken place, 

 but no alteration of physiognomy. Thus, the Tuaricks of the Sahara are 

 black, or nearly so, while the Berber tribes of the highlands of the Atlan- 

 tica, of which the former are a branch, are brown, or dusky, " subfusci 

 coloris." The Arab tribes, moreover, of the same desert, and those, 

 likewise, who have settled in Nubia and Abyssinia, are black, or of a 

 much darker colour than their Asiatic brethren; even where there has 

 been no admixture between them and the black races around them. 

 Waddington describes the Sheygya Arabs of Nubia as being of a clear, 

 glossy, jet black. " They are distinguished," he adds, " in every respect, 

 from the Negroes, by the brightness of their colour ; by their hair, and the 

 regularity of their features ; by the mild and dewy lustre of their eyes, 

 and by the softness of their touch, in which last respect they yield not to 

 the Europeans." M. Rozet describes the Arabs of pure blood, inhabiting 

 the Sahara, as large and well-made men, with black hair, open foreheads, 

 lively eyes, a well-formed mouth and nose, an oval countenance, and long 

 features : " their skin," he says, " is brown, sometimes olive; but I 

 have seen many as black as Negroes, yet preserving all the other charac- 

 teristics of the Arab race." 



A degeneration, then, of the form and features of other races into those 

 of the Negro, among people who have long settled in Africa, but continued 

 unmixed, cannot be found to have occurred. 



The intellectual inferiority of the African nations generally, but 

 especially of the Negroes, and the approximation of the latter, both men- 

 tally and physically, to the Simise, have been entertained as facts too strong 

 for contradiction, by the most celebrated writers, and gladly received by 

 those who, in such a theory, found some vague excuse for the acts of cruelty 

 and oppression involved in the lucrative traffic of the black portion of the 

 human race. White, Bory St. Vincent, Soemmerring, Camper, Cuvier, 

 and Lawrence, have lent their authority to the statement, and supported 

 the opinion by arguments of apparent solidity. They have measured the 

 skulls of Negroes, ascertained the degree of the facial angle, and hastened 

 to the conclusion, that the Negro brain is of less volume than that of the 

 European, forgetting that the peculiar configuration and extent of the facial 

 bones might render their modes of test fallacious. On the other hand, 

 Professor Tiedemann, who has published a valuable paper in the Philosoph. 

 Transact, (part ii. 1836), " On the Brain of the Negro, compared with 

 that of the European and the Orang-outan," contends, that the opinion re- 

 specting the cerebral degradation of the Negro race is utterly untenable. The 

 result of his researches is given in copious tables, shewing the comparative 

 capacity of the skulls of numerous individuals* of the African races, com- 



* Forty-one skulls of various African tribes, not Egyptian. Seventy-seven of Europeans, male, and 



