PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 53 



The rest of the pilous system, not less than that of the hair, 

 merits the attention of the anthropologist. Thus, a very espe- 

 cial fact, and to which, in our opinion, sufficient importance has 

 never been attached, is, on the one hand, the relative abundance 

 of the beard among the various races of mankind ; and on the 

 other, the time of its development. The Chinese, for example, 

 is for a long time beardless, and it is only about his fortieth 

 year that a few stiff hairs begin to appear upon his face. 



Among the Negroes, the Americans, and the Polar race, the 

 hair is, in the same way, very slightly developed on the face. 

 " The length of our beards (of thirty days growth), which had 

 not been shaved since we left the Victory " said Sir John 

 Ross,* " was, among other things, a source of great amuse- 

 ment, while one of them, a stranger, whose beard was of un- 

 usual length among this tribe, claimed consanguinity with us 

 on that ground." The thick and close beard seems, in regard- 

 ing the matter closely, the exclusive appanage of that race 

 which, sprung from the Imaiis, spread over the whole of Europe, 

 and whose finest representatives still inhabit the table-lands of 

 Iran.f Our neighbours, the Semites, are far from being so well 

 provided ; and Lieut. -Colonel H. Smith has J not, perhaps, 

 done wrong in proposing to make an abundant pilous system 

 the characteristic of one race, just as the crisped state of the 

 hair would become the characteristic of another. 



The systems of animal life, doubtless, show as many varieties 

 among different races of men as the systems of the life of 

 relationship ; only these varieties are much less known. It 

 will be sufficient for us to remember in this place the darker 

 colour of the blood and the sperma among the Negro race, as 

 already remarked by Aristotle and verified by Jacquinot, and 

 the equally dark tint of the nervous centres ; so that the whole 

 oeconomy of the Negro is, even in the most hidden parts (and 

 those most distant from solar or atmospheric influence), im- 

 pregnated with colouring matter. 



Let us notice, also, the development of the small labia 



* Narrative of a Second Voyage, etc., 1835, p. 427. 



f [The name given to Persia by its inhabitants. EDITOR.] 



J Compare The Natural History of the Human Species. 



