Chapter XV: Appendix: I

ETHNOLOGY.

By GEORGE ROLLESTON, M.D., F.R.S.

Linacre Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the
University of Oxford.

The following human bones--viz. four skulls, six lower jaws, four cervical vertebræ, one large and one small sized scapula, two small sized and fragmentary humeri, a fragment of a very slight but adult ulna, four cervical vertebræ, and five more or less fragmentary ribs--have been put into my hands by Mr. C. G. Oates, with information to the effect that they had belonged probably to a Bushman horde massacred somewhere between the Tati and Ramaqueban rivers, in S. lat. 20° 54′, and long. 27° 42′. With these human bones came some bones of _Equus_ (_caballus_ or _zebra?_); also of one large ruminant (_Bos taurus_ or _Bos caffer_), and one smaller; and part of the skull of an ostrich (_Struthio camelus_); and, later, the feet-bones of an elephant (_Elephas africanus_). All these bones had been collected by my former pupil, Mr. Frank Oates, of Christ Church, Oxford. The four skulls had not their lower jaws assigned to them; but to three of them jaws were assignable, which in all probability had really belonged to them, being very exactly coadaptable, to say nothing of their having been sent in company with them and with certain cervical vertebræ. These six lower jaws are by far the most important bones as regards the question of the nationality of the entire “find.” If, indeed, these half dozen lower jaws had been brought to me with no other accompaniments and with no other information than that they had been all brought from one spot in Africa, I think I should have been justified in saying that they had belonged to no other known African race than the Khoi-Khoin, or its Central African representative, the Akka. For they all six alike show the following distinctive and eminently significant peculiarities--viz. lowness of coronoid process, smallness of absolute size, and all but complete obsolescence of chin. Upon this I have already commented in _British Barrows_, pp. 706, note 1, 707, 716, _ibique citata_, comparing these lower jaws with the jaws of certain other confessedly “priscan” races, which differ from them in little but in being larger in size. It is, or should be, a commonplace among craniographers that, whilst the lower jaw is a more important bone for their purposes than any other single bone of the skeleton, and even than the pelvis itself, it is often more distinctive, if not more valuable, than at least the entire _calvaria_. Certainly this is the case with African skulls; for though it is possible enough, as was long ago pointed out by Professor Owen (see _Osteological Catalogue, Royal College of Surgeons of England_, 5385, p. 838, 1853, and for a contradictory statement Retzius, _Ethnol. Schriften_, 1864, p. 149), and as has recently been reaffirmed by Dr. Hamy in Paris, to find brachycephalic skulls among those of undoubted Negro races, and though, as I can aver from my knowledge of the collections in the Oxford University Museum, it is by no means always possible to distinguish either such brachycephalic Negro skulls, or certain other Negro skulls of the dolichocephalic type more usual amongst such skulls, from Bushman skulls of the respective proportions, both of which are represented in this latter series, it is within my knowledge always possible to do this if the skulls under comparison are in possession of the lower jaws belonging to them. The Negro’s lower jaw may or may not have the poorly-developed chin so constant in the lower jaws of the Bushman, and but rarely seen in the lower jaws of higher races; it may or may not have its anterior teeth sloping forwards in correlation with a prognathic upper jaw; it may or may not, I apprehend, though I have not met with such cases, be as a whole as small and feeble as the jaws of the Bushman have, with my knowledge, invariably been; but it never has shown, so far as I know, the low coronoid process, the shallow signoid notch, and the wide ramus so very commonly, or indeed all but invariably, found amongst not only the Bushman but the Eskimo race. The existence of this peculiarity not only in these two races so widely separated in space, though so nearly on a level in certain linguistic as well as certain other points of degradation, but also in so many of the lower jaws of the earliest representatives of our species, gives it a great morphological importance; and this morphological importance is not a little enhanced when we consider a second fact, drawn from a wholly alien line of contemplation, that, namely, which shows us that teleological adaptation to special needs, or necessities rather, as to dealing with food, has nothing to do with it. The fact of six lower jaws all alike exhibiting this striking peculiarity, which may be shortly described by saying that it resembles the conformation seen in the Gibbon, whilst the larger anthropoid apes show the coronoid developed into a prominence which comes much more nearly into resemblance with that usual in our own species, is to my mind very strong evidence to the effect that we have here six Bushman jaws before us. In all of these lower jaws we find the angle roughened and projecting outwards in correspondence with the insertion of fibres of the masseter, and thereby giving a greater width to the lower portion of the face; whilst, internally, the surface below the inferior dental foramen is remarkably concave, owing in some cases to a general though slight inversion of the lower portion of the ramus, and in others to a thinning of the bone in the region between the alveolar process, in the region of the last molar, and the angle thickened at once by the insertions of the masseter and of the pterygoid. Of the four skulls one only fails to find a lower jaw which will in any way admit of coadaptation to it, and this skull being exaggeratedly dolichocephalous as well as of much larger size and proportions than the other three, may very well be supposed to have belonged to one of the attacking and not to one of the attacked tribe; for I apprehend that in massacres, at least of Bushmen, the killing is not usually all on one side. The “reports,” indeed, both of their enemies and of their friends, assure us that a Bushman at bay is a foe by no means to be despised, and that, though little, he is fierce. And I can say for those three crania that their _tout ensemble_, as compared with that of Abantu skulls placed alongside of them, impresses me with the same kind of feeling which, after detailed measurements, I have felt in comparing the crania of Lapps with those of races such as the Finns living close to them. They appear to me, in fact, to indicate that their owners were of a smaller race than the owners of the skulls beside them, though the Bushman is not always a mere dwarf, as is sometimes stated. The feebleness of the two humeri, and even more notably of the fragment of ulna, and the small size of the cervical vertebræ, and of one of the two scapulæ accompanying these bones, tells in the same direction, but does not prove feebleness of mind.

For purposes of comparison with these three presumably Bushman crania, I have had three other crania at hand from the University Museum, of the genuineness of which there can be little doubt. One of these was presented to the University Museum by the late and much-lamented Dr. W. H. J. Bleek, to whose labours[66] in elucidating the language and rescuing the folklore of the Bushman tribe from perishing we owe so much. This skull, which was brought to England by Mr. Alfred Hughes of St. Asaph, bears a label, “Eland’s Bun, nr. Schintpriten,[67] Bushman’s skull,” and was handed over to me by that gentleman at the desire of Dr. Bleek. A second skull came into my hands through the kindness of W. G. Marshall, Esq. of Colney Hatch, having been entrusted to him by George Dunsterville, Esq., of Port Elizabeth, Algoa Bay, S. Africa, who was for some years surgeon to the hospital at Port Elizabeth. This skull, which, like the preceding, belonged to an exceedingly old man, carries the following labels:--“From the Transvaal, S. African Republic;” “Of an original Bosjesman, a tribe of small Hottentots, now nearly extinct; over age; height, 4 ft. 4 in.” The evidence for the authenticity of the third Bushman cranium which was in the University Museum previously to the arrival of Mr. Oates’s consignment, is even more irrefragable. This cranium was procured for the University through the kindness of H. N. Moseley, Esq., F.R.S., from Mr. Fairclough of Cape Town, and with the cranium came a knife, a poison-pot, a quiver, a poisoned arrow, and an ivory wrist-protector which had belonged to the owner of the skull. This skull belonged to a man past the middle period of life, and is remarkable for its absolute height, no less than 5·⅖ in.; which, however, falls short of its absolute width, which is no less than 5·6 in., by which inferiority the tapeinocephalic or platycephalic character which Mr. Busk (_Journal Ethn. Soc._, London, Jan. 1871) insisted upon as existing in Bushman crania, is preserved in it as well as in the two other crania just specified.

Retzius, in a paper first published in Swedish in 1856, subsequently in German in Müller’s _Archiv._ for 1858, and fully republished in the posthumously issued (1864) _Ethnologische Schriften_, p. 149, after saying that he had before him only a single skull of a Hottentot, and the figures which Blumenbach and Sandifort had published of Hottentot and Bushman crania, declares himself unable to detect any essential difference between such skulls and those of true Negroes. His great authority, therefore, should not be quoted to the disfavour of craniological evidence in this or any other similar question, inasmuch as he only speaks, and avowedly, from very scanty materials.

If we begin our comparison of these two sets of crania by a reference to the great distinction pointed out by Retzius himself, of brachycephalic from dolichocephalic crania, we have in the first place to demur to the statement, “In Afrika, fehlt, so viel man bisher weiss, jede Spur brachycephalischer Bevölkerung.” Against it have to be set in the first place Professor Owen’s words in the old _Osteological Catalogue_ 1853, p. 838, 5385, already referred to, and in the second, Professor Flower’s measurements (as recorded in the new _Catalogue of the Specimens illustrating the Osteology and Dentition of Vertebrated Animals_, pt. i. 1879, p. 232, 1238), of the “articulated skeleton of a Negress, born in the United States of North America, and about 16 years of age,” who was said, presumably by the donor, Professor L. J. Sanford of Yale College, “to have presented all the external characters indicating purity of race,” the cephalic or latitudinal index of the crania belonging to this skeleton being no less than ·811. But though this be so, there is no doubt, firstly, that the immense majority of Negro, and of Caffre and Abantu crania are dolichocephalic, and some such, for example as the Mozambique skull, casts of which were given by the late J. South, Esq., F.R.S., to many museums, exaggeratedly so; and secondly that the cephalic index of the Bushman is considerably higher on the average than that of the Negro. One of my six Bushman crania (that named No. 1, Mr. F. Oates, 788e), has a cephalic index of ·81, being equal to that of the Negro girl just mentioned in the College of Surgeons’ Museum; and though one of the six has but ·70 for its cephalic index, still the average of the six is as much as ·75, and Professor Flower’s six give us an average of ·768 as against one of ·731 for the circumambient “Zulus and Kaffirs,” and against one of ·736 for “African Negroes of various tribes.”

The altitudinal index is as significant as, if not more significant than, the latitudinal; and the tapeinocephalic or platycephalic character of the Bushman as compared with the two other assemblages of Africans just mentioned, is expressed by the figures ·716, as against altitudinal indices for them of ·741 and ·735 respectively. The average of the altitudinal indices of my six Bushman crania is ·72, the height exceeding the breadth in two cases only, and in each of them by one-tenth of an inch only.

As important a question to ask about a skull as either of the two relating to the two indices just mentioned, is, to my thinking, the question, does the cranium when resting, in the absence of its lower jaw, with the grinding surfaces of its teeth on a flat surface, touch that surface posteriorly with its occipital condyles, or with its inferior occipital squamæ? Accordingly as the former or the latter portions of the occipital bone give support posteriorly to a skull so placed, is the cranial curvature lesser or greater, and with it the antero-posterior arc described by the brain it contains. Tried by this test, first suggested by Prof. Ecker (_Archiv. für Anthrop._, iv. 1870, p. 288), the six Bushman crania in the museum whence I write, have four of their number resting on the occipital squamæ, as opposed to two which show the lesser curvature. I incline to think that this is a higher average than West Coast Negro crania would show, but Abantu skulls are very frequently so well developed as to have a considerable interval left between their occipital condyles and a flat surface, touching anteriorly the grinding surface of their teeth, and posteriorly their _conceptacula cerebelli_.

Another important point given us in that most instructive of _normæ_, the _norma lateralis_, is that of the junction or non-junction of the squamous to the frontal. This question is easily answered, as in no single one of my six Bushman crania does the squamous approximate itself at all more closely to the frontal than it would do in an equal number of European crania. Indeed, in all but one of these crania the alisphenoid is wide from before backwards, as though to furnish adequate lodgment for the temporo-sphenoidal lobe of the cerebrum, which, we know, alike from Gratiolet (_Mémoire sur les Plis Cérébraux_, p. 97), and Professor John Marshall (_Phil. Trans._, MDCCCLXIV, p. 510), to take a large development in the Bushman race.[68]

I have in the next place to draw attention to a striking qualitative or morphological peculiarity observable in no less than three out of my six Bushman crania; this being the presence either of a perfect, or of a rudimentary division of the malar bone into two distinct parts. The skull presented by Dr. Bleek presents us with a perfect rectangular suture, bilaterally symmetrical, as is usually the case with this suture both when it is and when it is, as here, not, rudimentary. In the two skulls, 788_e_ and 788_g_, collected by Mr. Frank Oates, the suture is rudimentary, being represented in each skull by a bilaterally symmetrical fissure running horizontally forwards from the zygomatico-malar articulation.[69] When I add to these observations the fact that similar sutures have not within my knowledge and research been observed in other African crania of any of the varieties living on that continent, it will be seen that the presence of them in these skulls goes a considerable way, when coupled with other considerations, towards making it pretty certain that they were of Bushman nationality. Further investigation of the distribution and non-distribution of this most significant suture amongst the several typical races of men, lends some additional force to this argument, and is besides not a little suggestive as to other views. In the Oxford University collection of crania I have not found any traces of it amongst 47 Australian, nor amongst our five Tasmanian crania, nor amongst our Stone age crania, a series well represented here. The only other race of indisputably pristine and very pristine habits, in which I have observed it to exist, is the Eskimo, and out of a large number of such skulls I have only noted it once, in the form of bilaterally symmetrical fissure. The other skulls which this museum contains possessing this suture either well or rudimentarily developed, are six in number. Four are presumably either of the Malay or of the Chinese race, as two were collected by Captain Elmhirst of the 9th Regiment, from the sea-shore of an island in the Chinese Seas, out of a great quantity which were lying about unburied, and were supposed to have belonged to Chinese pirates, and were finally presented to the University museum by the Rev. H. Hansell, Fellow of Magdalen College; as a third was the skull of a female Moro, collected in the mountains of Sulu, and presented by Captain Chimmo, R.N.; whilst the fourth was purchased from Mr. Cutter, the dealer in Natural History specimens, as being a Borneo pirate. The other two are from Ceylon, one being a Tamil from Central Ceylon, presented by Mr. B. F. Hartshorne, who was himself for a considerable time resident in the island, and has written upon its ethnology; the other being a “Malabar.” As the absence of this suture from the Zulu and Negro series gives additional importance to its presence in the Bushman, so its absence, which I have noted in a considerable number of Præaryan skulls, such as those of the Coles and Moosahurs, procured for me by William Duthoit, Esq., D.C.L., gives additional importance to its presence in “Malabars,” “Tamils,” Malays, and Chinese. Of course further research may discover this suture in other races of mankind; as the matter stands at present I am tempted to think that there is possibly some significance in its having been noticed in the Eskimo, the Bushman, in certain races of the Eastern Archipelago, and in Tamil skulls, as well as in the fact of its having been found to be absent in certain other skulls also of ancient races, such as the Kolarian and the Australian.[70]

The main sutures I think have perhaps something peculiar about them, this consisting in their being made of denticulations which are complex but shallow, contrasting thus with the complex but deep denticulations of well developed European, and the coarse but shallow ones of Australian, crania.

The verticality of the forehead observable in so many Bushman, and, indeed, in so many other African crania, is correlated with the comparative feebleness, and consequent lightness, of their lower jaws, which renders it unnecessary[71] that the brain and brain case should be rotated backwards to counterbalance the facial skeleton and to maintain the visual axis in a horizontal or semihorizontal plane.

I have appended to this paper the measurements given by Professor Flower, in his recently issued (1879) _Catalogue_, of the six Bushman crania in the College of Surgeons’ Museum, pp. 246, 247, and also the same measurements, as taken by myself, of the six Bushman crania in the Oxford University Museum. The very close correspondence of the two sets of measurements will strike any one who will compare the columns which give the averages of the two sets. The fact may be expressed in technical language by saying that both lists coincide pretty nearly in showing that, as Professor Flower has phrased it at p. 255, _l.c._, the Bushman cranium is “mesaticephalic,” “orthognathous” (or, at least, mesognathous, my average being 98, which is “mesognathous,” as against Professor Flower’s 97·8, which is just below the limits of mesognathy), “platyrrhine,” “microseme,” and “microcephalic.”

By a comparison of my measurements, not with those of Professor Flower, but with my own records of the history of each skull, an even more surprising and more important fact, in the way, however, not of coincidence but of the reverse, is brought to light. The most aberrant of the six in the matter of measurements is the very skull about the authenticity of which there is the most perfect certainty. This is the skull presented by Mr. Fairclough, with which were sent the articles specified above, as the characteristic of the Bushman race. But the skull itself is, in almost every important particular, different from the five other crania here measured with it. Its circumference and cubical capacity, its length, breadth, and height, and their indices, its orbital and nasal indices, are all alike aberrant from the average. It certainly would not have entered into the head of any craniographer to refer this skull to the Bushman variety of our species, unless he had been informed of the character of its accompaniments. A morphological point which might have served to indicate the character of its owner--I mean the feebleness of the nasal spine, a shortcoming more or less evident in all, or nearly all, Bushman crania--does not help us here; for we observe in this skull that the line of symphysis of the two halves of the upper jaw rises here anteriorly, as it does sometimes in European jaws, into a raised double ridge, which, though it slopes gradually into the plane of the alveolar border, and does not rise into a sharply-defined angular spine, and so far falls short of the typical “anterior nasal spine,” is yet a very different thing from the very feebly-developed bifid process of ordinary Bushmen, and many other African and other savage jaws.

The question arises, how are we to interpret these facts? We may explain them by saying that the elasticity and plasticity of the type is such as to admit of the escape of an exceedingly aberrant individual, and its homogeneity and plasticity, nevertheless, also such as to allow of its walls joining again, and restoring the perfect circumscription which is implied in our speaking of the race as possessing well-defined limits. Or lovers of logical consistency, who may not be extensively acquainted with the width over which variability may extend itself, may prefer to suggest that some kind of error may attach or have been attached to the identification of this particular cranium. It is possible, I suppose, that a runaway Caffre, or even an outcast white man, may have betaken himself to some horde of Bushmen, and identified himself with their manners and customs, and adopted their dress and equipment. Such voluntary degradations are known to have taken place, with the consequence of the refugee becoming not merely “half a savage,” but rather, as shown by the place and precedence given to him, “a savage and a half;” or, finally, the owner of this skull may really have been a cross between a white man and a female of the Bushman stock. To this last explanation I myself incline.

As regards the condition of the teeth, the skull presented by Mr. Fairclough, though referred by me to a man in the middle period of life, has only some seven or eight teeth, comparatively little worn, left _in situ;_ the rest have been lost, and traces of two or three large alveolar abscesses, and great absorption elsewhere of the alveolar processes are very evident. Alveolar abscesses have similarly left their traces in the skull presented by Dr. Bleek, in which, however, the teeth have been very much worn down, though only one or two have been lost during life. The skull presented by Mr. Dunsterville had lost all its teeth, save the two central incisors, during life, and the alveolar processes have suffered a very large amount of absorption in this senile skull.

Of the entire series, as the figures giving the length of the circumference and the cubic capacity show most plainly, we can predicate smallness; the average of the latter measurement being but 1285 as against 1485 cub. cent. obtained by Professor Flower for the cubage of seven Caffres and Zulus, and, indeed, as against 1330 from his measurement of his available Bushman crania.

With this small capacity is combined, which is by no means always the case in crania of races low in the scale of human life, a short basi-cranial axis, with an average length of no more than 93 millimetres.

In none of these six skulls is the patency of the frontal suture, which corresponds very usually to a wide receptacle for the frontal lobes of the brain, observable. On the other hand, the zygomata do not come into view, when the skull is held out so as to present its norma verticalis at arm’s length to one eye of the observer, with the invariability which might have been expected. In two only of these six skulls are both zygomata seen at the same time when the skull is held in this position; in three the zygoma of the left side only is seen; and in one neither zygoma comes into view. But these skulls, as is often the case in skulls of flesh-eating savage races, are of considerable density, and a greater thickness of walls as well as a greater development of the contents of a skull may prevent it from being phœnozygous. One other condition indeed, that of considerable development of the malar arch, which produces phœnozygy, is present in Bushmen, as in the skulls of other races exposed to the sun and glare, and other irritants of the eyes; but its working is countervailed by that of thickness of the cranial walls. All the Bushman skulls examined by Dr. Fritsch were broad in the sphenoparietal diameter (see his _Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika’s_, 1872, p. 413). With two exceptions, those constituted by the skull procured by Mr. Fairclough and that presented by Dr. Bleek, the supraciliary ridges and glabellæ are comparatively feebly developed.

The parietal tubera, or the spots on the external surface of the cranium corresponding to them, are placed far back in all these crania, and what I have elsewhere spoken of at some length[72] as the antero-posterior index, is consequently high. The same remark, however, may be made of Zulu and other Abantu crania.

It has often been stated that the ears in Bushmen are huge, misshapen, and outstanding. According, however, to trustworthy accounts of Professors Marshall and Flower, and Dr. Murie and Professor Wyman _(Proc. Boston Nat. History Soc._, ix. 1862, p. 56), the small size of the lobule appears to be the only constant character of this organ which is distinctive. (See Fritsch, _l.c._, p. 410.) Much that has been written on the peculiarity known as “steatopyga” in our own species might have been spared if what the great naturalist Pallas had written on the similar development called by the same name in one of the most widely spread varieties of the sheep, had been studied in the wonderful eleventh Fascicle of his _Spicilegia Zoologia_, from p. 63 to p. 69. I will quote only a few of the sentences of Pallas’s account, p. 64:--“In his quidem generalioribus, præsertim deformatione caudæ et auribus pendulis greges omnes conveniunt quas Nomades diversarum gentium Asiæ possident. Sed varias a temperie cœli, pascuis, aliisque causis vel cultura apud varias hasce gentes mutationes passæ sunt et ad Russos translatæ patiuntur. In Tatariæ Magnæ desertis occidentalibus, a Volga usque ad Irtin et Altaicum jugum, pascua maximam partem sunt aridissima, abundant vernalibus plantis acribus et liliaceis; postea æstate in elatis locis quæ maxime lanigerum pecus amat præter siccissima gramina, stipas similiaque, nil nisi artemisias amaras aromaticas, camphorosmam et salsolas succo et salibus abundantes servant. Ubique simul abundant lacunæ natroso, culinari, glauberianoque sale efflorescentes, et aquæ in desertis iisdem raræ plerumque iisdem salibus fœtæ sunt. Quæ quidem omnia ovium corpulentiæ maxime convenire pastores Europæi quoque norunt. Accedit vitæ genus et cultura.”...

Page 67.--“Sequitur ex istis deforme istud pulvinar sive uropygia quod in locum caudæ apud hanc varietatem ovium successit maximeque constantem ejus characterem prœbet superfluæ generatione pinguedinis ortum debere atque in campis salsuginosis Tatariæ occidentalioris primam patriam habuisse. In genere videmus certas corporis partes, illas puto præsertim, in quibus lentior sanguinis circulus obtinet, collectioni pinguedinis in textu cellulose maxime favere.”

Page 68.--“Orta ilia semel circa caudam collectio pinguedinis, veluti genialis morbus per generationes sensim adauctus fuit.”

As regards the distinctiveness of steatopyga, or, in other words, as regards the reason which by polygenist writers it was supposed to furnish for considering the Hottentot and Bushman races as specifically distinct from other human beings, there is no need to refer to the analogy which the steatopygous sheep suggests. For as Hartmann (_Die Nigritier_, p. 489, 1876) states, it is found also among Berber and Negro tribes, such as the Maqwa the Denqa, and the Bonqo, and, it may be added, that it may be seen figured in the English translation of Schweinfurth’s _Heart of Africa_, by Ellen E. Frewer, vol. ii. p. 121.

As against the ethnological significance of the hypertrophy of the nymphæ, which constitutes the “viel besprochene Hottentotten-Schurze,” the case is still stronger. For not only may this peculiarity be found amongst other African races, such as the Berber, Egyptian, and Negro (according to Hartmann, _l.c._ p. 489), and the Abantu and Sudan natives (according to Fritsch, _Die Eingeborenen_, pp. 282, 283), where its presence might be reasonably explained by reference to peculiarities of diet or climate, but it may, according to Hartmann, be paralleled by observation carried on in the very different surroundings of North Europe. The words of the last-named authority, whose intimate acquaintance at once with Africa and Prussia will not be questioned, are to the following effect: “Die viel besprochene Hottentotten-Schurze ist für Jemanden welcher fleissig die geburtshülfliche Station oder den Secirsaal einer grösseren Universität, z. B. Berlin besucht, auch Berber, Aegypter, und Nigritierfrauen ganz nackt gesehen hat, kein auszeichnendes Rassenmerkmal mehr.”[73]

The old view which ascribed a Mongolian origin to the Khoi-Khoin races is now pretty generally given up. A more important subject would, if I had space, be furnished me for discussion in the recent discoveries in Central Africa,[74] which appears to point to the existence of kinship between the pigmy Akka and Obongo tribes and the Bushman.

The main points which appeared to former writers to indicate Mongolian affinities are the yellow as opposed to the black colour of the skin, the prominence of the cheek bones, and the supposed obliquity of the opening of the eyelids. This last peculiarity, as Fritsch (_Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika’s_, p. 286) has shown, is due simply to the disagreeable necessity of keeping the eyelids constantly half-closed, owing to the glare and, as others have pointed out, the sandflies, to which these homeless savages are self-exposed. The Swiss Professor, Schiess-Gemuscus, of Basle, has similarly explained the causation of snow-blindness (see _Archiv. für Ophthalmologie_, xxv. 3, p. 173), by reference to the blepharospasmus and conjunctivitis, produced by the dryness and the glare of the upland snowfield; and I apprehend that the osseous structures underlying the organs protecting the eye may be reasonably supposed to undergo some modification in correlation with the increased demand for work, which “blepharospasmus” expresses as being thrown upon the muscular structures which they support. Thus the prominent malar arch and the forwardly projecting outer segments of the orbit, as seen alike in the Mongolian of the treeless steppe, in the Eskimo of the snow-desert, and the Bushman of the sun-burnt South African uplands, may receive a physiological as opposed to a morphological explanation. But, when we come further to consider the structure and composition of the various segments of the orbital ring in these races, we find combined with this physiologically explicable similarity a very considerable morphological difference. This is constituted by the conformation of the nasals, which in the Bushman form invariably an all but level plane between the nasal processes of the maxillaries, and contribute, being narrow, but a small factor to the interocular space, which, when the soft parts are _in situ_, appears disproportionately wide as compared with the same area in other races. In Mongols, Eskimos, and Australians the nasals very ordinarily form a more or less elevated arch, and they are not by any means so narrow as they are almost always in the Bushman race. In this latter these bones not rarely lose not only their characteristic arch-shape but also their individuality, and anchylose with each other mesially. It is, however, right to add that nasals of the Bushman type are not rarely, though by no means invariably, to be found in Negro and Caffre crania.

As regards the yellow hue of the skin, the likeness to the Mongolian races proper is perhaps less disputable, but with the skin we are bound to consider the hair, the peculiarities of which, as seen in the Bushman, are as different from those seen in the Mongolian variety of mankind as it is possible for two varieties of human hair from the same area to be. “The thinnest and flattest hair is that of the Bosjesmans, Papuans, and Negroes; the most cylindrical being that of Polynesians, Malays, Siamese, Japanese, and Americans. Europeans are between the two.” Such are the microscopic characters of the hair in the several great divisions of our species, according to Topinard (“Anthropology;” translated in _Library of Contemporary Science_ by Dr. Bartley), and it is needless to contrast the spirally contorted and tufted dark hair of the Hottentot or Bushman with the coarse wire-drawn straight black hair of the Mongolian or Eskimo. It is curious, however, if indeed not otherwise significant, that the Central African “Bushmen,” if so we may call them, of Ashango, occasionally bury their dead in a temporarily diverted stream-course, much as was done in the case of Attila, and, according to Mr. Wood, _l.c._, “in various parts of the world from the earliest known time.”

The Bushman race, as is well known, have strong proclivities in the direction of musical performances. The same, however, may be said of other priscan races as well as of them and the Mongolian and Kalmuck tribes,[75] and we cannot therefore lay any weight upon this point of similarity.

The custom, however explained, which the Khoi-Khoin races have of cutting off one or more joints of the little and ring fingers might, but with no great amount of probability, be taken to point to the existence of an affinity to races as far dislocated in space as the inhabitants of certain islands in Oceania, both Papuan and Malay. The Papuans, according to Sir John Lubbock (_Prehistoric Times_, 1869, p. 445), cut off the end both of the little toe and the little finger as a sign of mourning. The Friendly Islanders (Cook’s _Voyages_, vol. i. 222; Williams’s _Missionary Enterprise_, 547, 548) cut off one or two joints of their little fingers, and the inhabitants of Tracy Island, which was colonized from Samoa, do the like, according to the Rev. S. J. Whitwell (Petermann’s _Mittheilungen_ for 1871, p. 203). One form of the solemnization of matrimony amongst the Australians consists in the biting off by a woman of a bit of the little finger of the left hand. I do not know that the fact, deposed to by F. Müller in his contribution to the _Memoirs on the Voyage of the Novara_, p. 6, to the effect that Caffre women, when a child is sick, or when they themselves become widows, have a piece of their little fingers cut off, need be taken as indicating anything more than the exceeding contagiousness of bad and foolish customs, of which the old anthropologist and zoologist Zimmermann (_cit._ “Address to Biological Section of British Association Meeting at Liverpool,” see _Report_ for year 1871) spoke so caustically. Several instances of such adoption and borrowing, on the part of the Abantu tribes, from the conquered and persecuted Khoi-Khoin, might be adduced, and might be paralleled, at some distance, by the fact embodied in the two lines of Horace--

“Græcia captu ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.”

MEASUREMENTS OF SIX BUSHMAN CRANIA, AS GIVEN BY PROFESSOR
FLOWER, F.R.S., IN CATALOGUE OF SPECIMENS ILLUSTRATING
OSTEOLOGY AND DENTITION, ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF
ENGLAND, 1879, p. 246.