Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/331

Rh N E Q K 317 Caucasian by about 2 inches ; (2) prognathism, or pro jection of the jaws (index number of facial angle about 70, as compared with the Caucasian 82); (3) weight of brain, as indicating cranial capacity, 35 ounces (highest gorilla 20, average European 45) ; (4) full black eye, with black iris and yellowish sclerotic coat, a very marked feature ; (5) short flat snub nose, deeply depressed at the base or frontal suture, broad at extremity, with dilated nostrils and concave ridge ; (6) thick protruding lips, plainly showing the inner red surface ; (7) very large zygomatic arches high and prominent cheek bones; (8) exceedingly thick cranium, enabling the Negro to butt with the head and resist blows which would inevitably break any ordinary European s skull ; (9) correspondingly weak lower limbs, terminating in a broad flat foot with low instep, divergent and somewhat prehensile great toe, and heel projecting backwards (&quot;lark heel&quot;); (10) complexion deep brown or blackish, and in some cases even distinctly black, due not to any special pigment, as is often supposed, but merely to the greater abundance of the colouring matter in the Malpighian mucous membrane between the inner or true skin and the epidermis or scarf skin ; T (11) short, black hair, eccentrically elliptical or almost flat in section, and dis tinctly woolly, not merely frizzly, as Prichard supposed on insufficient evidence; 2 (12) thick epidermis, cool, soft, and velvety to the touch, mostly hairless, and emitting a peculiar rancid odour, compared by Pruner Bey to that of the buck goat ; (13) frame of medium height, thrown somewhat out of the perpendicular by the shape of the pelvis, the spine, the backward projection of the head, and the whole anato mical structure ; (14) the cranial sutures, which close much earlier in the Negro than in other races. To this 1 It is also noteworthy that the dark colour seems to depend neither on geographical position, the isothermals of greatest heat, nor even altogether on racial purity. The extremes of the chromatic scale are found in juxtaposition throughout the whole Negro domain, in Sene- gambia, the Gaboon, upper Nile basin, lower Congo, Shari valley, Mozambique. In the last region Froberville determined the presence of thirty-one different shades from dusky or yellow-brown to sooty black. Some of the sub-Negroid and mixed races, such as many Abyssinians, Gallas, Joloffs, and Mandingoes, are quite as black as the darkest full-blood Negro. A general similarity in the outward con ditions of soil, atmosphere, climate, food charged with an excess of carbon, such as the fruit of the butter-tree, and other undetermined causes have tended to develop a tendency towards dark shades every where in the Negro domain apart from the bias mainly due to an original strain of black blood. Even the African Arabs are described by Burckhardt, De Pages, and other observers as often decidedly black. Waddington mentions more particularly the Shegya Arabs south of Dongola on the White Nile as distinguished by their &quot;clear, glossy, jet black&quot; (p. 149). The same expression &quot;jet black&quot; is applied by Schweinfurth to the Upper-Nilotic Shilluks, Nuers, and Dinkas, while the neighbouring Bongos and Mittus are described as of a &quot; red- brown&quot; colour &quot;like the soil upon which they reside&quot; (Heart of Africa, i. p. 261). - This point has been fully determined by P. A. Brown (Classifica tion of Mankind by the Hair, &c.), who shows conclusively that, unlike true hair and like true wool, the Negro hair is flat, issues from the epidermis at a right angle, is spirally twisted or crisped, has no central duct, the colouring matter being disseminated through the cortex and intermediate fibres, while the cortex itself is covered with numerous rough, pointed filaments adhering loosely to the shaft ; lastly, the Negro pile will felt, like wool, whereas true hair cannot be felted. Observing that the Negro domain is also the habitat of the most anthropoid apes gorilla and chimpanzee, and that these bimanous and quadrumanous species are both of a pronounced dolichocephalic type (index nos. 72-75), some anthropologists have suggested the direct descent of the former from the latter. But against this view may be urged the different texture of the pile, which, although black in both, is woolly in the Negro but true hair in the ape. It may further be noted that in the eastern section of the dark domain, while the Papuan is still black and dolichocephalic, often excessively so, his presumed progenitor the orang-outang is, on the contrary, brachycephalic, with decidedly red hair. Dr Bernard Davis also recognizes brachycephaly in equatorial Africa itself, four out of the eighteen skulls from this region in his collection being distinctly of the round-headed type, and Schweinfurth describes the Bongos as &quot;hardly removed from the lowest grade of brachycephaly&quot; (i. 263). premature ossification of the skull, preventing all further development of the brain, many pathologists have attributed the inherent mental inferiority of the blacks, an inferiority which is even more marked than their physical differences. Nearly all observers admit that the Negro child is on the whole quite as intelligent as those of other human varieties, but that on arriving at puberty all further progress seems to be arrested. No one has more carefully studied this point than Filippo Manetta, who during a long residence on the plantations of the Southern States of America noted that &quot; the Negro children were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We must necessarily suppose that the development of the Negro and White proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brain pan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone.&quot; 3 It must at the same time be confessed that the question of the mental temperament of the Negro has been greatly complicated by the partisanship of interested advocates on either side. But for this disturbing element it would per haps be readily admitted that the mental are at least as marked as the physical differences between the dark and other races. And as both are the gradual outcome of external conditions, fixed by heredity, it follows that the attempt to suddenly transform the Negro mind by foreign culture must be, as it has proved to be, as futile as the attempt would be to suddenly transform his physical type. On his moral status, even when removed from the old associations and brought directly under more favourable influences, a lurid light is cast by the report of the Rev. Dr Tucker at the American Church Congress for 1883 on the present condition of the black communities in the Southern States. 4 It is more correct to say of the Negro that he is non- moral than immoral. All the social institutions are at the same low level, and throughout the historic period seem to have made no perceptible advance except under the stimulus of foreign (in recent time notably of Moham medan) influences. Religion is a system of pure f etichism and worship of ancestry associated with such sanguinary rites as the &quot; customs &quot; of Dahomey and Ashantee, and a universal belief in sorcery. Slavery continues everywhere to prevail, both as a local institution and a branch of the export trade, where not checked by European Governments. Much of the surplus population not thus carried off prob ably finds its way to the shambles of the native states in the middle Congo basin and other parts where cannibalism is practised, and where human flesh appears to be sold in the open market-place. During its voyage down the Congo the Stanley expedition was attacked at many points 3 La Razaa Negra nel suo stato selvaggio, &c., Turin, 1864, p. 20. 4 &quot;I know of whole neighbourhoods,&quot; he tells us, &quot;where there is not one single Negro couple, whether legally married or not, who are faithful to each other beyond a few weeks. In the midst of a prayer- meeting I have known Negroes steal from each other, and on the way home they will rob any hen-roost that lies conveniently at hand. The most pious Negro that I know is confined in a penitentiary for an atrocious murder, and he persists in saying he can see no offence against God in his crime, though he acknowledges an offence against man.&quot; Mention is further made of Negro missionaries guilty of the grossest immorality, living in open concubinage, addicted to thieving, lying, and every imaginary crime, yet all &quot;earnest and successful preachers, and wholly unconscious of hypocrisy. Their sins, univer sally known, did not diminish their influence with their race. It was impossible to doubt their absolute sincerity.&quot; A much darker picture is presented by the independent Negro commonwealths of Hayti, for c ighty years the scene of almost uninterrupted fratricidal strife.