their skin of perfect whiteness, their hair long, lank, and of a light co- 

 lour of the iris generally bluish. The Russians, the English, the Danes, 

 the Germans, are already removed somewhat from this primordial type: 

 the colour of their skiu is of less pure white, their hair of a deeper hue. 

 The French seem to stand midway betwixt the nations of the north, and 

 those of the south of Europe. Their skin is shaded with a deeper dye, 

 their hair less straight, and more of a chesnut and brown colour. The 

 Spaniards, the Italians, the Greeks, the European Turks, and the Portu- 

 guese, are browner, their hair in general black. Lastly, the Arabs, the 

 Moors, and the Abyssinians have hair, in som-e measure, black and crisp, 

 the skin tawny, and might serve for the step from the European Arab to 

 the Negro race; which is, however, distinguished from them by the 

 flattening of the forehead, the smallrtess of the skull, the slope of the line 

 measuring the height of the face, the thickness of the lips, the projec- 

 tion of the rnalar bones, and further, by a darker skin, thicker, greasy, 

 and, as it were, oily, as well as by shorter, finer, curly, and wooly hair. 



The Mogul race has the forehead flat, the skull jutting but little, the 

 eyes looking rather obliquely outwards; the cheeks are prominent, and 

 the oval of the face, instead of extending from the forehead to the chin, 

 is drawn between the two malar bones. The Chinese, the Tartars, the 

 inhabitants of the Peninsula, of the Ganges, and of the other countries 

 of India, of Tonquin, Cochin-China, Japan, of the kingdom of Siam, 

 &c. compose this race, which is more numerous than all the others, and 

 apparently more ancient also, which is spread over a greater extent of 

 Surface than the European Arab race, and yet greater than the Negro 

 race, since it reaches from the fortieth to the sixtieth parallel of latitude, 

 occupying an arc of the meridian of nearly 75, whilst that which mea- 

 sures the countries of the European race is only of 50, and the Negro 

 race lying under the equator, between the tropics of Cancer and of 

 Capricorn, is bounded within the limits of an arc of from 30 to 

 35*. 



The Hyperborean race, situated in the north of the two continents, in 

 the neighbourhood of the polar circles, composed of the Laplanders, 

 the Ostiaks, the Samoiedes, and the Greenlanders, is characterized by 

 a flat face, a squat body, and a very short stature. This degraded por- 

 tion of the human species derives, evidently, from the climate, its dis- 

 tinctive characteristics. Striving for ever with the inclemency of a se- 

 vere climate, the destructive action of an icy temperature, Nature, fet- 

 tered in her motions, shrunk in her dimensions, can produce only beings 

 whose physical imperfections explain their almost barbarous condition. 



The small progress of the negroes in the study of the sciences, and 

 in civilization, their decided taste, and singular aptitude for all the arts 

 which require more taste and dexterity than understanding and reflec- 

 tion, as dancing, music, fencing, Sec. the figure of the head, which is 

 midway between that of the European and the ourang-outangf, the ex- 



* Lacepede, Geographic Zoologique. 



f The black colour of the skin in the negroes seems owing, as I have already said, 

 to the scorching- of the gelatine, which is the base of the rete mucosum of Malpighi. 

 This colour, acquired in a long succession of ages, perpetuated and transmitted by ge- 

 neration, is become one of the characteristic features of the Negro race. M. Volney, 

 in a work which should be a model to all travellers, grounds on the face of the blacks, 

 a conjecture as ingenious as it is probable. He observes, that it exhibits pre- 



