LECTURE VII. 173 



and some tribes among tlie blacks, just as among the whiteSj 

 are distinguished by a high stature ; but even these exception- 

 ally tall Negroes never reach the length of the tall tribes 

 among the Germans or Anglo-Saxon races, and no such giants 

 will be found even in the most privileged black tribes, as are 

 occasionally found among the whites. 



The proportions in the corporeal structure greatly differ. 

 The trunk is smaller in proportion to the extremities, specially 

 to the arm, which in the Negro reaches below the middle of 

 the femur. Most Negroes can, without stooping, reach with 

 the finger^s end the region above the knee-cap. The neck is 

 short, the cervical muscles very powerful, but the shoulders 

 are narrower and less strong than in the white. There is a 

 certain resemblance in the form of the neck to that of the 

 gorilla, to which the remarkable development of the cervical 

 muscles, combined with the shortness and curvature of this 

 part, gives something of the aspect of a bull's neck. Surely it 

 is for this reason that the Negro always carries his burden on 

 the head, rarely upon the shoulders or back ; and it is for this 

 reason that he, like a ram, uses his hard skull in a fight. The 

 chest is narrow, the antero-posterior is almost equal to the 

 transverse diameter, which predominates in the German; the 

 belly is relaxed and pendulous, and the navel situated nearer 

 the symphysis pubis than in the European. Even in muscular 

 Negroes the arms are less rotund, the hips narrow, the thighs 

 laterally compressed, the calves lean. The Negro rarely stands 

 quite upright, the knees are usually bent, and the legs fre- 

 quently bandy. Hands and feet are long, narrow, and flat, 

 and form the least attractive features in the Negro figure. 



Most of these external characteristics remind us irresistibly 

 of the ape : the short neck, the long lean limbs, the projecting 

 pendulous belly — all this afibrds a glimmer of the ape beneath 

 the human envelope. Such similarities are equally detected on 

 examining the structure of individual parts. Commencing 

 with the skeleton, we find that the bones are always beautifully 

 white and hard, almost like ivory. The angles and rims are 

 always more marked, and the contour of the individual bones 

 coarser than in the European. 



