376 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.— CLASS I. MAMMALIA. 
free Malay is seen without a dagger. The people, in general, are very 
skilful in preparing weapons, particularly daggers. Their constant use of 
opium contributes to infuriate them ; and when maddened by its effects, they 
rush out, with their daggers in their hands, yelling, “ Amok! amok!” (ines, 
kill! kill!), whence the expression to “run a-muk.” The Malays are active 
only in war, where they are excited only by the thirst of robbery and blood. 
At home they are indolent, leaving all the labor to their slaves, and despis- 
ing agriculture. 
Tue Necro (/1, Ethiopicus, Bory). 
The Negro race is confined to the southward of the Atlas chain of moun- 
tains; its color is black, its hair crisped, the cranium compressed, and nose 
flattened. The projecting muzzle and thick lips, says Cuvier, evidently ap- 
proximate it to the apes; the hordes of which it is composed have always 
continued barbarous. 
The negro formation prevails in Western Africa in the region of the Gam- 
bia and Senegal, extending southwards, is most strongly marked in Guinea, 
and passes gradually over into the Caffre and Hottentot formation. In East- 
ern Africa, it commences to the south of Abyssinia, prevails in Zanguebar 
and Monomotapa, though not in general pure. Of the tribes in the more 
central of Africa little is known. The heat of the climate in all these regions 
may have some effect on the tint of the skin, but is by no means the only or 
the principal cause of the black color, since, under the same climates of the 
torrid zone, there are found all shades of complexion. White men in Af- 
rica only become somewhat swarthier, but never black, even in a succession 
of generations, unless they intermingle with the negroes; and blacks, in 
other regions and climates, are not found to lose their native hue. The seat. 
of the black color is the rete mocosum, and the external surface of the true 
skin (cutis) ; and when the rete mucosum is destroyed, as by disease, &e., 
the color is lost; so in parts of the body where the epidermis is unusually 
thick, —the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet,—it is of a 
lighter shade. Negroes are also distinguished from other races by other 
external and by some anatomical peculiarities, particularly in the conforma- 
tion of the cranium. The projection of the whole visage in advance of the 
forehead ; the prolongation of the upper and lower jaws; the small facial 
angle; the flatness of the forehead, and of the hinder part of the head 
(occiput), and the compression in the direction of the temples, allowing less 
space for the brain than in some other varieties ; the woolly, frizzled hair ; 
the short, broad, and flat nose; the thick, projecting lips, with many other 
peculiarities of formation, constitute some of the characteristics of the 
Ethiopic race. 
