NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 227 



other bones of the head, and acquires a predominance* 

 which, as is well known, it never loses in the Negro. 

 During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, 

 the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches 

 nearly the permanent shape of the Americans. At birth, 

 the flattened face, and broad smootli forehead of the 

 infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side 

 of the head, and the widened space between, repre- 

 sent the Mongolian form ; while it is only as the child 

 advances to maturity, that the oval face, the arched fore- 

 head, and the marked features of the true Caucasian, 

 become perfectly developed."* The leadimj characters, 

 in short, of the various races of mankind, are simply 

 representations of particidar stages in the development of 

 the highest or Caucasian type. The Negi'o exhibits per- 

 manently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and 

 slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some consider- 

 able time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal 

 American represents the same child nearer birth. The 

 Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And so 

 forth. All this is as respects form ;t but whence colour. 

 This might be supposed to have depended on climatal 

 tLgencies only ; but it has been shown by overpowering 

 evidence to be independent of these. In further con- 

 sidering the matter, we are met by the very remarkable 

 fact that colour is deepest in the least perfectly developed 

 type, next in the Malay, next in the American, next in 

 the Mongolian, the very order in which the degrees of 

 development are ranged. May not colour, then, depend 

 upon development also ? We do not, indeed, see tliat a 



* Lord's "Popular Physiology," explaining observations by M. 

 Serres. 



t Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute of 

 maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the 

 Americans and Negroes. 



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