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wafted over the ocean by currents of air, used to give notice of the distant approach of a slave-ship. We, too, are recognizable by the gases we emit, or the dog would not be able to follow the track of his master. The nations of the New World are distinguished from the Europeans by their odour, while the Creoles even have expressions for the slight effluvia of the Americans (catinca), and for the exceptionally strong and repulsive smell of the Araucanians (soreno)."I

It is only in the absence of other and more constant distinctive marks of the various human families that we venture to employ the colour of the skin for such a purpose, for the degree of darkness, and even the tone, varies in every race, and often even in the members of a single horde. Even in Europe, we meet with people of fair or dark complexion. The former is more common in the north, the latter in the south. There are many fair Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese; while, on the other hand, dark complexions are not rare in England. The Celts of Gaul are described by the old geographers of the imperial age as a fair race of men; so that, as the epithet is no longer applicable to the French of the present day, we may conclude that characters of this sort may alter in comparatively short periods. Among the Wakilema of Eastern Africa, German travellers noticed a light negro colour with a tinge of blue in some individuals, but others surpassing mulattoes in fairness, although there were no grounds for suspecting an intermixture.

It is undeniable that latitude does affect the colouring of the skin in some degree, though in a manner as yet unascertained. We find the deepest shade of black only in the neighbourhood of the equator, in Africa, India, and New Guinea. The natives in the vicinity of Moreton Bay, in Australia, were as dark as any negro, while ten degrees southwards copper colour became more common. 12 Among the members of the Mediterranean race, the Abyssinians are very dark; among the Indo-European, the gipsies and Brahminical Hindoos are the darkest of all. In the latter, an admixture with the aboriginal inhabitants might be conjectured;

11 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. i. pp. 114, 118.
12. Ibid, vol. i. p. 52.

Cause of the Colour of the Skin.

91

yet Graul was able to distinguish a man of high caste, i.e., an Indian of Aryan origin from the Tamuls, by the almost European fairness of his skin. 13 That it is not the rays of the sun which produce the darkening of the complexion is evident from the fact. that, in coloured men, the covered portions of the body are equally dark. But if a higher temperature were the cause, we should find darker skins in all lowland than in elevated regions. This hypothesis is indeed somewhat confirmed by a comparison between the inhabitants of Bengal and the hill people of the Himalayas, who are much fairer, and the same is observable in the inhabitants of the mountain plains of Enarea and Kaffa in Abyssinia. Other observers in the very same regions have, however, found the inhabitants of the valleys the fairest. 14 Munzinger adds that the sultry shore of the Red Sea is occupied by fair people, and the mountain districts by dark people. 15 Still more conclusive is the fact that, of all the aborigines of America, in whom no suspicion of admixture is possible, the Aymara, who occupy plateaux of the same altitude as the summits of the Bernese Oberland, are most remarkable for their black-brown colour, which is deepest precisely in the coldest tracts. 16 Other observers imagined the skin to be darkest in places where a hot temperature is combined with an atmosphere highly saturated with moisture. Livingstone thinks damp heat is the cause of the deep colouring in South Africa. The dark Aymara in the dry, cold land of Peru and Bolivia, bear witness against this conjecture, while the Yuracara, whose very name indicates a pale countenance, occupy the eastern slopes of the South American Cordilleras, which are constantly dripping with moisture. 18

Still we must always bear in mind that a European who lives long in the East Indies is obliged to adapt himself to an alteration in his customary physiological functions. The difference in colour between arterial and venous blood is strikingly diminished in

13 Reise nach Ostindien, vol. iv. pp. 151, 152.
14 Quatrefages, Rapport, p. 155.

Leipzic, 1855.

15 Ausland, p. 954. 1869.

16 Von Tschudi, Reisen durch Südamerika, vol. v. p. 212.
17 Missionary Journeys in South Africa, vol. i. p. 378.
18 Darwin, Descent of Man, vol. ii. 347.

Europeans in tropical countries, because, owing to a feebler process of combustion, the absorption of oxygen is smaller.1 On the other hand, the biliary secretions become more active in hot countries. So that by overwork of an organ destined for comparative repose, namely, of the liver, in a native of high latitudes, of the lungs, in a native of the tropics, the former frequently falls a victim to bilious fevers in the hot climate so uncongenial to him, while the latter when transferred to cold regions frequently perishes of consumption. 20 A European who has survived the change, loses his rosy complexion under the tropics. It is even recorded that an English gentleman, Macnaughton by name, who long lived the life of a native in the jungle of Southern India acquired, even on the clothed portions of his body, a skin as brown as that of a Brahmin.21 A negro boy, brought from Bagirmi to Germany by Gerhard Rohlfs, changed his colour after a residence of two years, from "deep black to light brown.” 22 If an increased secretion of bile influences the accumulation of pigment cells in the mucous layer of the lower skin, the darkness of the Lapps and Finns may be ascribed to their uncleanliness, the impure air of their dwellings, and their unwholesome food, since these also affect the biliary secretions.23

It had long been known that negro races enjoy complete health in Equatorial Africa, while Europeans are quickly carried off by coast fevers. In America the yellow fever spares the negroes and even the mulattoes.. Now, if there were a causal connection between the darkness of the skin and immunity from local diseases, it would be evident that on the first colonization of fever districts those individuals who were already brown or who became swarthy, would readily overcome the perils of the situation, while those who were paler would be earlier swept away, and in consequence of this elimination a darkening of the skin might gradually become

19

J. R. Mayer, Die Mechanik der Wärme, p. 97. Stuttgart, 1867. 20 Bastian in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, part i.

1869.

12 Pruner Bey, Questions relatives à l'Anthropologie, p. 5. Paris, 1864. 22 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, p. 255. 1871. Other instances of negroes becoming lighter are given by Waitz on the authority of Blumenbach. Anthrop. i. 60.

23 Richard Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, vol. iii. p. 615.

Hair as a Mark of Race.

93

hereditary.24 This is a mere conjecture as yet incapable of proof, but possessing the single advantage of being the only attempt at an explanation. It must be added, however, that Dr. Nachtigal reports that the black natives of the Soudan succumbed to the marsh fever after the inundations in Kuka as rapidly as the foreign immigrants. 25

Among the preeminently hereditary physical characteristics of man is his covering of hair. It is true the colour of the hair is variable, even in individuals, since it arises from a pigment, the disappearance of which produces the whiteness of old age. Red hair occurs in almost all parts of the world, except America. Dumont d'Urville 26 says he saw it even among Australians. It is not uncommon among Finnish tribes, nor among the Berbers of Northern Africa. In Morocco there are even some of the latter with light eyes and fair hair,27 while even Scylax knew of the Gyzantis in the Lesser Syrtis as fair Libyans. 28 According to Manetho, the Egyptian queen Nitokris, who belonged to the sixth dynasty, was distinguished for her fair complexion, rosy cheeks, and light hair.29 Fair hair is also traceable in mummies of the Guanches, the extinct inhabitants of the Canary Islands, who were a branch of the Berbers. 30 Even among the Monbuttoos, on the Uellé, Schweinfurth saw many fair negroes of a grayish tinge.31 Of the Federal soldiers in the American civil war, 5 per cent. of the Spaniards and Portuguese, and 51 per cent. of the Scandinavians, had red, or some sort of light hair. 32 These shades of hair occasionally appear among Armenians, Semitic Syrians, and Jews, and in hybrids of European and native Peruvians about Moyobamba.33 Hence, although we must not entirely overlook

24 From an address by Dr. Wells before the Royal Society in 1813. Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 3; and Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 214. 25 Zeitschrift für Erdkunde, vol. vi. p. 335. Berlin, 1871.

26 Voyage de l'Astrolabe, p. 404.

27 G. Rohlf's Erster Aufenthalt in Marokko, p. 60. Bremen, 1873.

28 Scylax Periplus, cap. 110. Geogr. Graeci Minores, ed Müller, i. p. 88. 29 Lauth, Aegyptische Reisebriefe, p. 1335. Allgem. Zeitung, 1873.

30 Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 54.

31 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. v. p. 15. Berlin, 1873.

32 Gould, Investigations in Military and Anthropological Statistics, p. 193. Raymondi's Geografia del Peru in the Globus, vol. xxi. p. 300.

33

the colour of the hair, in describing nations, it is certainly a very inconstant character. The form of the hair is of far greater importance. Neighbouring nations may sometimes be easily separated from one another by this character, although it is impossible to draw an invariable line. The aborigines of America, without exception, have stiff, coarse hair; the Papuan is distinguished by his crown of hair from the Australian, whose hair, although frizzly, does not unite in tufts. The character of the hair, and especially that of the hair of the head, may be described as smooth or straight, as curly or gracefully waved, as frizzly, or finally as tufted. The causes of the crimping and twisting are manifold; one is, the size of the diameter, for the finer the hair, the more readily is it affected by the causes of crimping; since the human hair is never as soft as sheep's wool, no genuine wool like that of animals is found on man. But for our purpose, the form of the transverse section is of greater importance; this is sometimes circular, sometimes elliptically compressed, so that hair may vary from the form of a cylinder to that of a doubly convex band. Although considerable variations occur in individual representatives of a race, yet Pruner Bey hoped to make use of the averages of size, as a serviceable means for the classification of human races. If the greater diameter of the section is taken at 100, the flatter the hair, the lower will be the number expressing the short diameter. The most perfectly cylindrical form, with a short diameter of 95, occurs in the South Americans, while the mummies of the Aymara in Peru have an average diameter of 89. The Mongols, in whom the compression fluctuates between 81 and 91, approach nearest to the inhabitants of the New World in this point. In the Papuans of New Guinea, the smaller diameter of the hair is shorter than in any other people, varying from 26 to 56 in extreme cases, with a mean of 34. This is another point of difference between the Australians, who have an index of 67 and 75, and the Papuans. It is also significant that the Hottentots nearly agree with the Papuans, for in them the smaller diameter is as low as from 55 to 50.34 Yet sharp distinctions cannot be drawn by this means, but

34 Pruner Bey, De la Chevelure, p. 15. Paris, 1863. Goette on the other hand found only a small diameter among the Afandy.

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