8 On the Aborigines of Brazil. 



His hair long, hard, tense, black, and shining, hangs down in 

 thick disorder from his head. It is never curly, though 

 often cherished with care, and indeed in many tribes shaved 

 in a peculiar way, or pulled out as a national distinction. His 

 hair is very late in getting grey, and very rarely becomes white : 

 baldness is hardly to be found in one among a thousand. 

 No hairs are in general observed in the axillae or on the 

 chest; and the hair on the male organs and chins of the 

 men is very weak and scanty. Yet sometimes one sees an 

 Indian with a tolerably strong black beard, but never with 

 a curly one. 



Doubts regarding jy Orbigny s Sub- divisions. 



Such do the aborigines of Brazil appear in their collective 

 physical characteristics, and this picture recurs in different 

 parts of the country, from one spot to another, in such a 

 way, that it is hardly possible to ascribe to any one or other 

 race of this varied population individual and absolute charac- 

 teristics, sufficiently strong to distinguish them from the 

 rest. It is here just as it is in Europe, where no physiogno- 

 mist would venture, from his knowledge of the physical cha- 

 racteristics which mark the Roman, the Celtic, the German 

 or the Jewish races, to pronounce authoritatively on the race 

 of any given individual. I must also expressly remark, that 

 I recognised their collective physical peculiarities, without 

 any material variation, in Brazilian Indians in all the pro- 

 vinces of the empire, and found that prominent differences 

 depended solely on the degree of civilization of particular 

 tribes, or on the development of individual intelligence. 

 This makes me doubt whether we are entitled, with D'Or- 

 bigny, to distinguish three sub-divisions, or as he calls them 

 races, of the aborigines of South America. This writer, 

 who certainly had ample opportunities of observing many 

 aboriginal tribes on the continent of South America, distin- 

 guishes an Ando-Peruvian race, a Pampas-Indian, and one 



