INHABITING PART OF SOUTHERN AFRICA. 213 
ally altogether Herculean. The excess of nutrition gives 
rise, no doubt, to the enormously swelled legs to which 
many of them are liable, when, through indolence, or the 
infirmities of age, they are disinclined to continue the same 
life of activity. Circumcision and polygamy they practise 
with almost all African nations. 
According to the relations of modem and ancient travel- 
lers, tribes similar to the Kaffre race are found scattered 
over Africa, apparently unconnected with each other. We 
are told of a nation of NegroeSj called Nub(^, inhabiting the 
country to the west of the Nile, near the confluence of the 
Abyssinian and true Nile : they are described as being 
mild in character, and of small features, though the nose 
be flat, and the hair woolly : they speak a soft sonorous 
language, differing in these points from their neighbours. 
Travellers describe the Ababdes, living to the east of the 
Nile, as being Blacks, with European features. But as few 
travellers have been anatomists, their accounts cannot alto- 
gether be depended on. 
A very general belief prevails, that, by external means, 
and more particularly by pressure, the human cranium 
and form generally may be modified, and permanently al- 
tered, and that this may at last become hereditary. It is 
asserted, for example, that the more remarkable craniolo- 
gical differences amongst nations are occasioned by external 
pressure ; that the flatness of the African nose arises from 
the same cause; that Negroes are bandy-legged, because 
they are carried during infancy on their nurses' back ; and 
that the large feet of the Kaffre, and the small ones of the 
Bosjeman, are owing to an abundant supply of food to the 
former, and a deficient one to the latter *. All such asser- 
* BiuMENBACH (Ic Nat. Vatiet. 
