LECTUEE XV, 431 



have no sucli projecting cheekbones, thick lips, flat noses, 

 thick wool, brutish physiognomies, and so acute facial angles, 

 as their brethren in the old world. In the course of some 

 one hundred and fifty years they have, as regards their 

 external aspect, passed over more than a quarter of the dis- 

 tance which separates them from the white race." 



On summarising all these observations and adding the 

 blanching of the skin, I must ask what are the characters for 

 the remaining three-fourths of the distance which the Negro 

 has yet to traverse, and whether the slight changes enumerated 

 above really indicate an approach to the white race, or whether 

 they are merely such changes as the Negroes undergo even in 

 their own country with advancing civilisation ? There are 

 leaden-grey Negroes in Africa, Negroes with but moderately 

 puffed up lips, with more prominent noses, less woolly hair and 

 less brutish aspect, with less prominent cheek-bones and less 

 acute facial angle, than the Guinea Negroes possess, which re- 

 present the low Negro-type in general. Though we would not 

 maintain that all the peoples of central Africa have sprung 

 from the same common stock, we know at least so much from 

 the descriptions of African travellers, as to enable us boldly to 

 assert that each of the above quoted slight changes occur as 

 much in Africa, without any contact with the whites, without 

 any transportation across the sea, and are developed amongst 

 the Negroes themselves. The proof for our assertion is easily 

 found : the extract from Pruner- Bey's ai'ticle on Negroes, 

 which we gave in a preceding lecture, confirms our view, as 

 Pruner-Bey has only examined African Negroes in Africa. 

 But supposing these changes to take place only in America, 

 do these changes, upon which so much value is set, affect any 

 of the essential features of the organisation, especially the skull 

 and the skeleton ? Have any of these gentlemen compared 

 a slave-skull, I will not say of a hundred and fifty years ago, 

 but one of only three preceding genei'ations, with that of a native 

 Negro skull ? And how do these observations agree with 

 the measurements of Aitken Meigs, who assigns to American 

 slave-skulls less capacity than to the skulls of Negroes born 

 in Africa ? 



We might say still more : was either of these observers, such 



