76 
OUR RACE AND ITS ORIGIN. 
in other secluded localities, so also the being web-fingered 
and toed. 
In northern regions, where tribes wander exposed to in- 
tense cold, having few means of resisting it, dwelling in 
badly constructed huts, in constant smoke and filth, often in 
subterranean abodes, it is easy to imagine that in process of 
time the effects must be stamped on their features ; the 
oblique eye of the Tartar is at once suggestive of smoky 
hovels and dark abodes. As long as their isolation exists, 
however numerous the race, such distinctive marks will 
remain. 
The negro has hair, properly so termed, and not wool. 
One difference between the hair of a negro and that of 
the European consists in the more curled and frizzled con- 
dition of the former. This, however, is only a difference 
in the degree of crispation, some European hair being very 
similar. Another difference is in the greater quantity of 
coloring matter or pigment in the hair of the negro. It 
may be worth while to remark that if this cuticular excres- 
cence of the negro were really not hair but a fine wool, if it 
were precisely analogous to the finest wool, still this would 
by no means prove the negro to be of a peculiar and separate 
stock, since we know that some tribes of animals bear wool, 
while others of the same species are covered with hair. It 
is true that in some instances this peculiarity depends en- 
tirely on climate, and is subject to vary when the climate is 
changed ; but, in others, it is deeply fixed in the breed, and 
almost amounts to a permanent variety.* This is the case 
with the sheep in the Tropics ; their wool is there converted 
into coarse hair, and the character of the animal seems like- 
wise in some measure to be changed. 
In the Negro race the practice of exposing the person to 
the fierce rays of the sun, and their copious unction of oil, 
must tend to render not only the body black, but the hair 
of the head crisp and woolly. The universal European 
practice of clothing the person and covering the head, 
accounts for the fairness of skin and straightness of hair. 
* Prichard’s Natural History of Man, p. 104. 
