NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 397 
The chin is rather retreating in the women, but occasionally the men will 
have fine strong chins, though strong and prominent in a peculiar way by a 
sharp bulge immediately under the lower lip, a bulge which is clearly scooped 
out in a circular form on either side. As a rule there is a decided falling 
in of the jaw under the cheek bones while the jaw-bone again bulges out at its 
angle near the ear. I have never seen a continuously firm line of jaw, and 
another sign equally rare or non-existent is the cleft chin which is often seen 
in Europeans. The most prominent points of a negro’s face, even of a good 
type, are the projecting cheek bones, the bulging forehead, the broad flat nose, 
deep and expanded nostrils, the everted lips, and the sharp, rounded, narrow 
chin. 
Almost all the male negroes of British Central Africa grow some moustache. 
It is ordinarily of scattered, thick, bristly hair, but sometimes the moustache 
hairs at the side are rather tightly curled. The beard is generally present 
but often reduced to a long tuft on the chin. In some cases, however, it crosses 
from ear to ear (often diminishing or falling off in the depressed portion of the 
jaw-bone on either side of the chin), and a narrow line of whiskers (little curled 
hairs) is also present in exceptionally hairy men. The question of face hair 
is largely one of cultivation, or no cultivation. Some of the men discourage 
hair on their faces and pluck out the hairs with a tweezer, others allow them 
to grow unchecked, and never 
shave, with the result that the 
face hair is often scattered 
and w r eak in growth. The 
negro men of Central Africa, 
as of other parts of the con¬ 
tinent, who attempt to live 
like Europeans and begin by 
shaving their faces regularly 
(instead of plucking out the 
hairs as the savages do), can 
in course of time grow beard, 
whiskers and moustache not 
very much less in volume 
than those of the average 
European. 
In some of the Yao a 
beard of considerable length 
grows from the chin, but this 
would seem to hint occasion¬ 
ally at some distant inter¬ 
mixture with the Arab. On 
the other hand, the Atonga, 
who betray in their history 
and racial type no trace of 
intermixture with a foreign 
race, or with the coastmen, 
often possess long, pointed 
beards. The hair of the beard 
has less tendency to curl than 
that of the head or body a yao of the upper shire 
