PHYSIQUE. 



83 



screws, stiffened with fat. The skin is soft, but 

 the ef9.uvium is distinctly African ; the colour is 

 chocolate-brown and rarely black, unless the 

 mother be a slave from the South. The figure 

 is, like the features, Semitic above and negrotic 

 below. The head is well seated upon broad 

 shoulders ; the chest is ample, and the stomach, 

 except in early boyhood or in old age, does not 

 protrude or depend. But the bunchy calf is 

 placed near the ham; the shin-bone bends for- 

 ward, and the foot is large, flat, and lark-heeled. 

 Nothing is more remarkable than the contrast be- 

 tween form and face in the woman-kind : upon 

 the lower limbs, especially the haunches, of the 

 Medicean Venus a hideous ape-like phiz meets 

 the disappointed eye : above hangs a flaccid 

 bosom, below 



wand-like is 



Her middle falling still, 

 And rising whereas women rise — 

 Imagine nothing ill ! 



There is not, as amongst the Hottentots, that ex- 

 aggeration of the steatopyga which assimilates 

 the South African man to his ovines : the sub- 

 cutaneous fat overlying the gluteian muscles and 

 their adjacent s, forms in early life a cushion rather 

 ornamental than otherwise. Young men often 



