The Peoples Of The World Being A Popular Description Of The Characteristics Condition And Customs Of The Human Family

Excerpt from The Peoples of the World, Vol. 1: Being a Popular Description of the Characteristics, Condition, and Customs of the Human Family Entering into a consideration of the matter a little more fully, we find that even colour, which at first strikes us as the most remarkable difference, is - as Linnaeus long ago declared - of comparatively little moment as a specific character. As has been so repeatedly pointed out, a black face is common to races very widely apart. The Moors of Senegal are among the highest of the superior peoples of the world, the Bushmen of the Cape Colony about the lowest; yet the first is as swarthy as the neighbouring negroes, whilst the last is of the colour of coffee with milk, to use a French naturalist's familiar simile. The skin of a negro is, moreover, of exactly the same structure anatomically as that of a flaxen-haired Norseman, and in the mucous layer of very dark-complexioned whites the pigment cells which give the colour to the 'skin of black people are developed in exactly the same way - in other words, there is a gradation in what has been technically called melanism. Freckles are simply spots of the same nature as that blackness which, owing to the same cause, has in the course of time sufiused the entire face of the swarthy barbarians of so many parts of the world; though at the same time sunshine and warmth are not the sole determining causes of colour. Otherwise, the Indians of Central America would be as black as the West African negroes, though even there the heat has some effect, since the Queen Charlotte Islanders who live off the northern coast of British Columbia are among the fairest skinned of their race, while the Indians from Mexico southward are among the darkest of all the American families of men. There are also endless gradations in the hair of man. The wool of the negro, the lanky horse-tail locks of the North American Indian, and the fine silky hair of the Caucasian races have each some peculiarities. Links connecting them are not difficult to find; but, as ethnologists from the time of Prichard to that of Quatrefages have pointed out, there is an infinitely greater variety displayed in a short time after certain of the lower animals are transferred from their original home to a locality where they come under different physical surroundings and influences. For example, the wool of the sheep wili in some hot countries be replaced by short, smooth hair, while in the high plains of the Andes the wild boars are said to acquire a kind of wool, and numerous similar changes attributed to climate and the influence of surroundings may be found described in works treating of this department of anthropology. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.