132 



and several of which are deposited in the Mu- 

 seum of Natural History at Paris. The negroes 

 prefer the thickest and most prominent lips ; the 

 Calmucks perceive the line of beauty in turned 

 up noses. M. Cuvier * observes,, that the Gre- 

 cian artists, in the statues of heroes, raised the 

 facial line from 85 to 100 degrees, or beyond the 

 natural form. I am led to think, that the bar- 

 barous custom, among certain savage tribes in 

 America, of squeezing the heads of children 

 between two planks, arises from the idea, that 

 beauty consists in this extraordinary compres- 

 sion of the frontal bone, by which nature has 

 characterized the American race. It is no 

 doubt from following this standard of beauty, 

 that even the Azteck people, who never dis- 

 figured the heads of their children, have repre- 

 sented their heroes and principal divinities with 

 heads much flatter than any of the Caribs I saw 

 on the lower Orinoco. 



The figure of the warrior in the relief of 

 Oaxaca presents a very extraordinary mixture 

 of costumes. The ornaments of his headdress, 

 which has the shape of a helmet ; those of the 

 standard (signum), which he holds in the left 

 hand, and on which we see a bird, as on the 

 standard of Ocotelolco ; - are found in all the 

 Azteck paintings. The vest with the long and 



* Le^onsd'Anatomie comparee, t. 2, p . 6. 



