ON THE NATURAL VARIETY
OF
MANKIND.

As I am going to write about the natural variety of mankind, I
think it worth while to begin from the beginning, that is, with
the process of generation itself. I do not intend to put forth
a system, or frame hypotheses, or enter into the intricacies of a
labyrinth, out of which I should scarce find an exit; or, lastly,
stir up cud already chewed a thousand times. Nor am I one to
write the Iliad after Homer, that is to say, the universal history
of generation after the immortal labours of the great Haller; but
to spend only a few words upon a matter, which may be con-
sidered as demonstrated from the repeated observations and
profound judgment of the most learned men, and which will
throw some light on my subject.

The part which each sex takes in the generation of the
fetus, and which of the two has the greatest influence has occu-
pied the principal philosophers and physicians for many thou-
sand years. It was reserved at last for the profound sagacity of
Haller, to be the first who was bold enough to break open the
bars of nature's doors, and to unfold, from observing the incu-
bation of eggs, so often investigated before by eminent men,
that great mystery, which it was thought could be explained
by nature alone; and in the fewest possible words I must here
give his account of the matter¹⁾. A close dissection of impreg-
[Seite 70] nated eggs shows that the intestine of the chick is so of a piece
with the envelopes of the yolk that the first envelope forms the
skin of the fœtus; the second envelope forms the exterior lining
of the intestine jointly with the mesentery and the peritonæum
of the fœtus; the third is the covering of the interior intestine,
and is produced from the same membrane as the ventricle, the
œsophagus, the throat and the mouth, from what is in fact the
skin and the epidermis of the fœtus: that the yolk takes up
the arteries from the mesenteries of the chicken itself. It follows
from this, that the whole egg is part of the mother, in whom
the ovarium lies with all its eggs quite perfect, before any con-
tact with the male has taken place. Then, that the fœtus is
part of the egg, or at all events is joined to the egg by an in-
separable bond, for the yolk (and that alone) constitutes the
egg, together with its envelope, whilst it is in the mother, but
that yoke is so united with the fœtus by its duct, that it forms
but one continuous body. Hence it is proved, by direct demon-
stration, that the embryo is contained in the maternal egg, and
that the female supplies the true stamina of the future fœtus.
That primeval germ would lie buried as it were in eternal slum-
ber, were it not aroused by the access and stimulus of the fertil-
izing seed of the male, and particularly by the subtle odour of
his parts, which are particularly adapted for causing irritation;
and then it breaks forth from the Graafian follicle in which it
was shut up, runs through the canal, and in this way comes into
the womb; there again it is finally unfolded and developed, and
changed in some of its parts by the influence of the male, comes
out like its parents. It leaves a manifest trace of its former
habitation in the ovarium, in the shape of an opaque body,
which takes its place¹⁾. The offspring at last brought to light,
and in the process of time become adult, can produce like with
the other sex of its species, whose posterity ought to go on for
ever like their first parents. What then are the causes of the
[Seite 71] contrary event? What is it which changes the course of gene-
ration, and now produces a worse and now a better progeny, at
all events widely different from its original progenitors? This
it will be our business to answer in the course of this disserta-
tion. But in order not to break the thread of the discussion, it
will be better to mate a few preliminary observations.

First of all I will say a few words about the influence of
climate, whose effects seem so great that distinguished men
have thought that on this alone depended the different shapes,
colour, manners and institutions of men¹⁾. There are, however,
two ways, in which men may gather experience of a change of
climate, both of which are to our purpose. They may emigrate
and so change the climate, and also it may happen that the
climate of their native country may sensibly become more mild
or more severe, and so the inhabitants may degenerate. Several
examples of each kind will be given in the proper place. It
will be sufficient to say here that there is no diversity of habit,
which may not be produced by varieties of climate; which is
extremely apparent, even from the history of brute animals.
If European horses are transported towards the east, as to
Siberia, China, &c., in process of time they, as it were, dwindle,
and become much smaller in body, so that at last you would
scarcely recognize them as being of the same species. Cattle,
on the contrary, whether they are sent to the Yakutan penin-
sula, or Kamtshatka, or Archangel, turn out taller and more
robust, and the same thing has been experienced with English
sheep in Sweden.

The squirrels on the river Obi are larger by one third than
those which are found at Obdorsk²⁾, &c., to say nothing of the
difference in colour, which observation shows to vary with still
greater facility. But that the climate of the same country may
[Seite 72] undergo a change, no one can doubt, who will only compare
this very Germany of to-day with ancient Germany, or our own
contemporaries with our ancestors¹⁾. There was a time when the
elk, now only an inhabitant of the extreme north, was common
on the banks of the Rhine, and when that very river was so
often frozen that the Gauls themselves used to offer sacrifices
to prevent its affording a passage to our ancestors, their neigh-
bours; when the most prodigious forest covered almost the
whole country, and when there were no vintages, and other
very good reasons of the same kind, which will account for our
being unable to find the huge bodies of our ancestors, powerful
only for attack, their firm limbs, threatening countenances, and
fierce eyes, in the Germans of our age.

Besides the climate there are other causes, which have indeed
an influence in altering bodies; many of these you might say
depended, however, upon the climate themselves, but there are
others which it is very clear have nothing to do with it.
Amongst these influences above all we must set down the
mode of life and of bringing up. The examples of domestic
animals are trite, which manifestly have diverged into astonish-
ing varieties, and almost put off their original nature. I have
mentioned the effect climate has upon horses, and we shall
now see how they are affected by mode of life. It is quite
astonishing how wild horses²⁾ differ from our geldings by their
small stature, their large heads, their murrey colour, their
shaggy coats, and by a ferocity of disposition, which is almost
untameable, so that they seem to approach almost nearer to the
ass than to our domestic horses. Indeed, the famous Gmelin
had scarcely any hesitation in believing that the tame horse,
the wild horse, and the ass, were all of the same species, and
that the latter had by circumstances alone degenerated from
the tame horse; but this is going too far, because the ass has
[Seite 73] certain interior organs which are wanting in the horse¹⁾, and the
reverse also is true. However, among horses certainly wild,
and also among our own, we may perceive a great difference in
strength between those which feed upon natural pastures²⁾, and
those which are kept in stables. For example, it is known that
a colt, if it is born in a feeding-ground of the former kind,
within half-an-hour after its birth will run after its dam
seeking food, but if it is born in a stable, it will frequently
lie for twenty-four hours and more on the ground, before it
dares to stand on its feet.

As yet I have touched on two causes which change the
form of animals, climate and mode of life. It remains to speak
of the third, namely, the conjunction of different species, and
the hybrid animals thence produced. It is a difficult subject,
although after the labours of recent authors³⁾ I may treat it
briefly.

There are three cases in the discussion about hybridity
which ought to be clearly distinguished. First, the mere
copulation of different animals; secondly, the birth of offspring
from such copulation; and, thirdly, the fertility of such off-
spring and their capacity for propagation.

The latter case, although rare, (and that by the providence
of the Supreme Being, lest new species should be multiplied
indefinitely,) I would admit of in beings closely allied. At all
events there are many testimonies to the fertility of mules⁴⁾.
There is no reason for doubting that hybrids have sprung from
the union of the fox and the dog, and those too capable of
generation, as the Spartan dogs or alopekides of the ancients.
[Seite 74] There is still at Göttingen the daughter of a fox (from which
many children have been born) which was impregnated by a
domestic dog; and in it you may still recognize the smooth
forehead and other marks of the ancestral form. The experi-
ments of Sprenger¹⁾ prove the prolificacy of hybrid birds.

The number of infertile hybrids is so copious as to be tire-
some to count. Of all these, mules, so far as we know, are the
most ancient. For although we may doubt their being ante-
diluvian²⁾, nor dare ascribe their discovery to Anah³⁾, yet their
extreme antiquity appears even from profane authors⁴⁾, and
almost the first monuments of art⁵⁾. To these rarer hybrids may
be added the one Linnæus saw from the copulation of the
Capra reversa, with the Capra depressa⁶⁾. But I do not quite
trust Hesychius, when he says that the jackal comes from
the union of the hyœna and the common wolf⁷⁾. With respect to
the union of dogs and apes⁸⁾, and the hybrids so born, I still
remain in doubt. The animals seem too different; still I have
known two instances, where bitches are said to have been im-
pregnated by male apes, to which I should think it wrong to
refuse credit. One took place in the territory of Schwartzburg;
and a picture of this hybrid, carefully drawn, is in the possession
of Büttner, who very kindly lent it to me. It represents a dog,
of smaller size than the domestic dog, and of a dirty yellow
colour; its eyes, ears, and hairy collar differed from the common
dog, but it is said were very like those parts in the father. The
other instance is related by an eye-witness, worthy of all belief,
to have occurred about three years ago at Frankfort-on-the-
Maine; that a bitch brought forth offspring by the Simia Diana
of Linnæus, in ferocity, disposition, and in its gibbous habit
[Seite 75] and long tail, exactly like its father. I leave this business to
be investigated by those who, perhaps, may have an opportunity
of more accurately observing it; for the difficulties are well
known which occur in experiments of this kind. It is very
hard to prevent the animals upon whom the experiment is to
be made from consorting with others, and at the same time not
to destroy the desire of copulation: moreover, if offspring have
anything peculiar by accident, it is instantly attributed to a
diversity of parentage. And what makes me suspicious about
these things is this especially, that I have seen many apes of
both sexes and different species constantly living for many
years in the midst of dogs, also of different sexes, and yet never
saw anything of the kind. On the other hand, instances of
false reports are very common, as that of a cat, born together
with two puppies, the report of which reached this neighbour-
hood a few years ago; but when it was properly examined, the
little creature which they called a cat, was easily recognised by
the more sagacious as a puppy slightly deformed, and the whole
prodigy became a joke. Nor can I otherwise interpret
Clauder's account¹⁾ of a cat being impregnated by a squirrel, of
whose litter one is said to have been like the father, and the
rest like the mother; and other stories of the same kind.

From all this we must carefully separate the plainly fruitless
unions of animals of different species. I will allow that male
brutes when burning with desire, and unable to obtain females
of their own species, may sometimes be so excited by others,
whom they come in contact with, as perchance to copulate with
them; but I think that with very few, and those only very
nearly allied, is this actually successful, and in most cases the
attempt is ineffectual. There are, however, good reasons for
refusing to believe that from any incongruous attempt of this
kind, offspring can be born or even conceived. Here let us
consider the unequal proportions of the genital organs in many²⁾;
which parts are providently and carefully adapted for copulation
[Seite 76] in either sex of the same species; but in distant genera
render the whole thing impossible, or at all events very difficult,
and certainly unfit for the purposes of conception. Besides, I
do not see according to what laws the offspring of this kind,
coming front diverse parents, is to be formed in the womb,
since in each, species of animals there are certain and very
definite periods for the gestation and pregnancy of the mother,
the formation and progressive development of the fœtus. It
will, however, be worth while to relate some instances of con-
nexions of this kind which have been formed contrary to nature.

Of all these the most paradoxical seems to be the union of
a rabbit with a hen, so celebrated by Reaumur¹⁾; but on.
which doubt has been thrown by his own pupil Buffon²⁾, Haller³⁾,
and others; indeed, Buffon could not even succeed in raising a
progeny from the hare and the rabbit, animals so nearly allied,
although he suspected copulation took place. That illustrious
philosopher seems, therefore, correct in supposing that if the
rabbit of Reaumur ever did tread the hen, it must have been
done from extreme lasciviousness, and had there been no hen
the animal would have made use of something else for the same
purpose. Meanwhile there are other evidences to this remark-
able fact. Thus my revered tutor Büttner, himself, often saw
rabbits treading hens, and they afterwards laid empty eggs
(hyponemia or zephyrea as the ancients called them).

I have often seen a rabbit running about alone amongst
broods of fowls, and playing with and imitating them, but I
never could observe that it attempted anything more, or really
had connexion with them. I have been told the same story
about a house dog of Matthew Gesner, who they say also used
to tread hens. I am not much surprised at this, since it is well
known that dogs, when in heat, make use of inanimate things
sometimes in order to effect their purpose. It is said that the
Gallus calecuticus has been known to tread the duck, and in the
[Seite 77] same way that the drake treads the hen, and that chickens of
wonderful forms are the result¹⁾. They have often been observed
to copulate. There is still in the town a drake which treads
the hens, but they are barren. But I will pass over many in-
stances of this sort of monstrous and fruitless copulation, since
I wish to say a little about the jumars, those famous hybrids
from two clearly different species, the bovine and the equine.

I do not know whence Buffon²⁾ took it, that Columella
had mentioned jumars, and that he had been quoted by Con-
rad Gesner. I cannot find either the mention in the one,
or the quotation in the other. On the contrary, I think Gesner
was the first to mention jumars³⁾. For I cannot take notice
here of the filly born from a cow at Sinuessa in Livy⁴⁾, since he
speaks of it as a most unheard-of prodigy. But Tigurinus
Polyhistor says ‘“that he once heard that a particular kind of
mule was to be found in Gaul, near Grenoble, which was sprung
from an ass and a bull, and called in the vulgar tongue Jumar.
And in the Swiss Alps near Coire, in the Splugen country, he
had heard on credible testimony, that a horse had been born
from a bull and a mare⁵⁾.”’ Jerome Cardan, a contemporary of
Gesner, has also mentioned jumars, and says they have superior
teeth⁶⁾, and are very strong and bold⁷⁾. After him Joh. Baptist
Porta reports that he himself had seen at Ferrara an animal of
this kind, in shape like a mule, with a calf's head, two protu-
berances in the place of horns, black in colour, and with the
eyes of a bull⁸⁾. Things of this kind are repeated down to the
time of John Leger, who discourses at great length⁹⁾ about
them, and also gives a print of them¹⁰⁾. He says ‘“that jumars
[Seite 78] are torn from the union either of a bull and a mare, or a bull
and an ass: the former are taller, and called Baf; the latter
smaller, and Bif; that the former have the upper jaw evidently
much shorter than the lower, like swine; that the upper teeth
are placed further back than the lower, to the distance of a
thumb, or two fingers. In the latter, the Bif, the lower jaw is
shorter than the upper, as is the case in hares, and the upper
teeth project beyond the lower. So that neither kind can graze
in the fields, unless the grass is so long, that they can crop it
with the tongue. These hybrids are exactly like an ox in the
head and tail, and the places for horns are marked by small
protuberances. As to the rest, they are exactly like an ass or
horse. Their strength is wonderful, especially compared with
their small body; they are smaller than common mules; they
eat little and are swift; that he himself went in one day 18
miles among the mountains with a jumar of this kind, and that
much more comfortably than he could have done with a horse.”’

After this account more recent¹⁾ authorities have received
others in good faith, and report that jumars are to be found
elsewhere besides in Piedmont; according to Shaw²⁾ at Tunis
and Algiers, according to Merolla³⁾ at Cape Verde, and by others
in Languedoc⁴⁾.

Naturalists gradually became more sceptical of the fact and
were disposed to dissect this kind of hybrid. Reaumur⁵⁾ met
with a disappointment and so did Albums, who had ordered
one from Africa, which perished on the way. Bourgelat, the
veterinary surgeon, was afterwards fortunate enough to be able
to dissect a jumar in the theatre of Lyons⁶⁾, but the results
[Seite 79] of his labours are not satisfactory, because he seems to have
trusted too much to report. ‘“The ventricle was in shape like
that of the horse, but much larger. The jumar had altogether
much more of the mare than of the bull, both as to its external
form, and its interior constitution, especially as regards the
ventricle, whose singular structure in the bovine genus, on
account of their rumination, is well known. And thus the
observation of those physicians stands confirmed, who assert
that the mother has a larger share in the formation of the
fœtus than the father.”’ The consequence therefore of this
investigation was that the learned knew less what to think
than ever¹⁾. Afterwards Buffon had two jumars dissected; one
from the Pyrenees, the other from Dauphiné. In neither of
them was any trace of a bull to be found²⁾.

All this however was not enough for inquirers into natural
history. And at last, at the request of some men of great note,
Bonnet, namely, and Spallanzani, Cardinal delle Lanze had two
jumars³⁾ dissected by a skilful hand, and ordered anatomical
plates of them to be engraved. It is very clear from these
efforts that the pretended jumar is nothing more than a
mere hinny⁴⁾ (bardeau). The larynx, glottis, ventricle, biliary
ducts, are all specifically equine and not bovine.

Thus was finally proved what was suspected from the first
by the great Haller⁵⁾. I myself have lately seen at Cassel quite
closely two hinnies, which report asserted to be jumars. They
were of the size of a large ass, and very like one in shape,
[Seite 80] black in colour, with horses' teeth in each jaw¹⁾; no vestige of
rumination, &c.

But to return from this digression. What has already
been said serves partly to show the difficulty of dealing
with the accounts of hybrids of species very different from
each other, and partly as some sort of proof of development;
and will afterwards be of use to us when in varieties alone
it will help to show that the greater part of the form in
animals is derived from the mother, and very little from the
father.

Let me say only a very few words about those human
hybrids which credulous antiquity so frequently declared to be
born or generated from brutes²⁾, but to which not only physical
arguments but also moral ones of the greatest importance
forbid us to attach the slightest faith; so that it seems ex-
tremely likely that the Supreme Being foresaw these disgusting
kind of unions and took care to render them futile.

Those points which ought to be carefully attended to in any
discussion upon hybrids, and which I took notice of above³⁾, must
not be neglected here.

That men have very wickedly had connexion with beasts
seems to be proved by several passages both in ancient⁴⁾ and
modern writers⁵⁾. That however such a monstrous connexion
[Seite 81] has any where ever been fruitful there is no well-established
instance to prove. Indeed those things which are related of
the intercourse of Indian women with the larger apes and of
their anthropomorphous offspring¹⁾ seem dubious and fabulous
even to James Bontius²⁾, who is in other respects sufficiently cre-
dulous. And even if it be granted that the lascivious male apes
attack women, any Idea of progeny resulting cannot be enter-
tained for a moment, since those very travellers relate that
the women perish miserably in the brutal embraces of their
ravishers³⁾.

I now leave this disgusting theme, and all the more
willingly, because I must draw near our goal; but still a few
words must be said upon the actual ways in which man differs
from other animals, before we investigate the varieties of men
amongst themselves. The theme is indeed a most fruitful and
admirable one, but the narrow limits of this book do not
permit me to linger long over it, and it is necessary in this
place to dismiss it in a few words; although the slender matter
which I have got together on this interesting subject, I will
gladly promise to give elsewhere to the public.

I think I shall here perform my duty best, if I first say
a little about the endowments of the mind, and then about
the bodily structure. Not indeed that these two points have
apparently the slightest relation to each other. For it would
clearly be impossible to draw any inference from comparing
the organic structure of animals with the human body, as to
their respective mental faculties: which will easily appear to
any one who compares an elephant or a horse with an ape
(which Reines⁴⁾ calls the copy of a man, or even a man as
[Seite 82] regards the structure of the face, the φοράν and the motions of
the limbs).

As to the discussions, which in this age particularly, have
stirred up so many barren disputes about the mind, the reason,
and the speech, &c. of brutes, they do not seem to me to be
really so difficult or confused, if a man have only a moderate
familiarity with the habits of animals, some knowledge of the
physiology of the human body, and be sufficiently free from
prejudices.

Man then alone is destitute of what are called instincts, that
is, certain congenital faculties for protecting himself from exter-
nal injury, and for seeking nutritious food, &c. All his instincts
are artificial (kunst-triebe), and of the others there are only the
smallest traces to be seen. Mankind therefore would be very
wretched were it not preserved by the use of reason, of which
other animals are plainly destitute. I am sure they are only
endowed with innate or common and truly material sense (which
is not wanting either to man), especially after comparing every-
thing which I have read¹⁾ upon the rational mind of animals with
their mode of life and actions, and what perhaps is the most
important speculation, and demands most attention, with the
phenomena of death, which are very much like both in animals
and men²⁾. Instinct always remains the same, and is not advanc-
ed by cultivation, nor is it smaller or weaker in the young
animal than in the adult. Reason, on the contrary, may be
compared to a developing germ, which in the process of time,
and by the accession of a social life and other external circum-
stances, is as it were developed, formed, and cultivated. The
bullock feels its strength so much as to threaten, though its
weapons of offence do not yet exist;

whence unless from some interior sensation? To man, on the
contrary, nothing of the kind happens. He is born naked and
weaponless, furnished with no instinct, entirely dependent on
society and education. This excites the flame of reason by de-
grees, which at last shows itself capable of happily supplying, by
itself, all the defects in which animals seem to have the advan-
tage over men. Man brought up amongst the beasts, destitute
of intercourse with man, comes out a beast. The contrary how-
ever never occurs to beasts which live with man. Neither the
beavers, nor the seals, who live in company, nor the domestic
animals who enjoy our familiar society, come out endowed with
reason.

From what has been said, the direct difference between the
voice and speech of animals is plain¹⁾, since we consider that man
alone ought to be held to possess speech²⁾, or the voice of reason,
and beasts only the language of the affections. In process of
time, the mind becomes developed, and finds out how to express
its ideas with the tongue. Young children give names to those
they love, which is the case with no animal, although they can
distinguish their master and those familiar to them well enough.
Those stories are utterly undeserving of attention which the old
travellers related about the language of certain distant nations,
who they said were endowed with nothing but an inarticulate
and, as it were, brutish voice. It is indeed beyond all doubt
that the fiercest nations, the Californians, the inhabitants of the
Cape of Good Hope, &c. have a peculiar sort of speech, and
plenty of definite words, and that animals on the contrary,
whether they be like man in structure, as the famous orang-
utan is³⁾, or approach man in intelligence, to use the words of
Pliny about the elephant, are destitute of speech, and can only
[Seite 84] emit a few and those equivocal sounds. That speech is the work
of reason alone, appears from this, that other animals, although
they have nearly the same organs of voice as man, are entirely
destitute of it¹⁾.

If now any one casts an eye on the human body, it would cer-
tainly be more easy to distinguish man from every other animal
at the very first glance, than to lay down any fixed criterion²⁾ by
which he differs from the rest. It would seem as if the Supreme
Power had avoided giving any distinct and persistent characters
to the human body, just in exactly the same proportion as this
its highest master-piece far excels all other animals in its noblest
part, which is reason.

But it will be worth while to reckon up, one by one, a few of
those things which seem peculiar to our bodies. First of all I
would speak of the erect position of man, which I cannot leave
untouched because of the recent paradoxes of P. Moscati³⁾;
although it is very tedious to serve up, and as it were to chew
over again a matter which has been most thoroughly investi-
gated, and is clearer than the noon-day sun. It is true, I can
believe that this elegant author, who is in other ways worthy of
all praise, composed this book as an attempt and not quite
seriously, partly because he has made use of arguments which
you would scarcely expect to find from a man not only acquaint-
ed with human and comparative anatomy, but from one who
constantly appeals to both; and partly because he leaves quite
unnoticed points of indisputably great importance as to the
bipedal structure of man, which have already been most dili-
gently handled by the great Galen⁴⁾, and the immortal Barth.
Eustachius⁵⁾. I could easily allow our author⁶⁾ that there is little
[Seite 85] weight in those common arguments for the erect position of
man, deduced from the position of the great occipital foramen¹⁾,
the proportion of the feet to the hands, the mammae, the chest²⁾,
and the shape of the shoulder-blade; although there remain the
greater difficulties of the parts which so wonderfully prove that
the walk should be bipedal. I say nothing of the apex of the
heart and its direction in the embryos of man and the brutes;
this indeed our author³⁾ mentions, but yet explains in such a way
that he seems to give a handle to the opposite opinion. I say
nothing of that powerful argument deduced from the movement
of the head and its connexion with the first cervical vertebræ,
and I omit it the more readily, because of that elaborate work
of Eustachius on the point⁴⁾, which I should have to transcribe
almost in its integrity. The pelvis alone, and the construction
of the feet would easily bring over to my view those in other
respects acquainted with anatomy, if they would compare even
cursorily the composition of the bones of the quadrupeds with
those of man. Let any one look at the broad flanks of the
human skeleton, ending below in a narrow hip, the short pelvis
largely dilated above but narrowed below so as to open an
escape for the fœtus, yet carefully provide for the prolapsus of
the womb, and then compare these things with the oblong right-
angled and almost cylindrical pelvis of quadrupeds with their
wide hip, and their outwardly curved ischiatic prominences;
lastly, let him observe the construction of the glutei muscles,
and the connexion of the muscles of the leg in man and the
brutes, and then let him say if he thinks it probable that they
can have the same mode of locomotion. Let any one make the
experiment on some fresh animal skeleton, or at least let him
look at Coiter's picture⁵⁾ of the erect skeleton of a fox, going along
in the most ridiculous manner on its hind-feet, and then let him
imagine a human skeleton resting upon its arms and feet, and
[Seite 86] he will not but see that a bipedal brute and a quadrupedal man
would equally pass for prodigies. Inseparable also from the
general consideration of the pelvis is that other proof derived
from the acetabulum, and the head and neck of the thigh-bone.
And that this neck is oblong in man, and goes downwards with
a sensible obliquity, but is short in brutes, even in apes, and
nearly horizontal; and the head more obliquely articulated with
the hip; so the whole structure of the bones of the feet, the thick
calcaneum of man, the juncture of the ancle with the sole of the
foot, which in. man too is oblong and broader, and many other
things of the kind which point in this direction, disagreeably
trite and too well known to students of anatomy, but difficult to
be understood by those unacquainted with medicine. For which
reason I think it would be foolish to say much about them,
especially as I have indicated the sources to which those should
go who want still more proofs of so easy a matter.

Another property of man comes directly from the foregoing,
namely, his two hands, which I consider belong to mankind
alone; whereas apes, on the contrary, must either have four or
none at all, of which the great toe being separated from the other
fingers of the feet serves the same purposes which the thumbs
do in the hands. This is so certain, that on that account alone
the fœtus said by Robinet¹⁾ to be that of a pongo, must certainly
be considered a human embryo, even if no notice be taken of the
other proportions of the bodily parts, and the whole structure
which is entirely human. Hahn²⁾ besides Galen³⁾ has written
expressly on the admirable formation of the human hand.

All these things therefore being duly weighed, I am induced to
consider even that famous animal the orang-utan as a quadruped.
I know indeed that several authors of voyages have said a good
deal about him, and given him out as a biped. The reasons
which induce me to come to a different conclusion, besides the
tendency of many travellers to exaggerate a little what is extra-
[Seite 87] ordinary, are the following; in the first place, some who have
described these animals have said only that it frequently¹⁾ goes
on its hinder feet, which at least excites a suspicion, that they
do go on all fours like other animals: moreover, many are de-
picted in the plates as leaning upon a club, after the fashion of
dancing bears²⁾. The palm of their hands is as deeply furrowed,
and marked with folds and slits as the soles of their feet³⁾.
The depressed and receding heel-bones prevent their walking
firmly. If you examine them more closely, the elongated pelvis,
and especially the muscle called elevator claviculæ⁴⁾, make it highly
probable that a quadrupedal gait is natural to this animal. The
instance of the long-armed ape is favourable to the same opinion⁵⁾.
Man therefore is the only biped, unless any one likes to put for-
ward the manati, birds, (especially penguins,) or the lizard
Siren. The example of those unfortunate creatures who,
according to accounts, have been here and there brought up
amongst wild beasts, goes no way to show that the erect posi-
tion is not natural to man. Hard necessity, perhaps too imita-
tion, taught these wretches to go on their hands and feet at the
same time that they were obliged to creep through woods and
fruit-bearing copses, and even into the dens and receptacles of
wild beasts; nor is it quite certain that it was the case with all.
The Hessian boy⁶⁾ found amongst the wolves sometimes only
walked as a quadruped; the girl of Zell⁷⁾, and the girl of
Champagne⁸⁾, and the boy of Hameln⁹⁾ went upright. And the
argument deduced from the first crawlings of infants is much
weaker still, since it must be very well known to any one who
has observed them, that they scarcely ever crawl as quadru-
peds, but rather squat upon their buttocks, rest upon their
[Seite 88] hands¹⁾, and as it were row with their feet. Pliny²⁾ therefore was
not quite correct when he said that the first promise of strength
and the first gift of life was to make a man like a quadruped.

As to those who make out the erect position to be the
fomenter of disorders, they must forget both veterinary practice
and the diseases³⁾ which we find afflict both wretched men and
fierce quadrupeds.

Besides his erect position and his two hands there are some
other things to be considered which also seem peculiar to man.
Of all animals he alone seems to be placed on the earth alto-
gether naked and defenceless, since he has neither powerful
teeth, nor horns, nor talons, nor a shaggy hide, nor any other
protection. It is no use objecting that there are other animals
equally unprovided; something will always be found which
keeps them protected to some extent⁴⁾. He is usually without
hair, whereas the quadrupeds which expose their body to the
heavens and the seasons are provided either with a shaggy hide,
or a thick skin, or shells, or scales, or spikes. Few parts of a
man's body can be called hairy⁵⁾, and his back is nearly bare,
which is certainly another argument for the erect position of
man. His teeth all on a level, round, smooth, and perfectly
regular, are in one word so constructed, that it is clear from the
first glance, they were given to man principally to chew his food
with, partly also for speech, and in no wise as weapons of
attack⁶⁾. Even the teeth of apes differ greatly in form from
those of men. Their canines are longer, sharper, and more dis-
[Seite 89] tant from their neighbours: the molars deeply incisive, bristling
as it were with enormous tusks. Besides the teeth, man is
marked out as a gentle and unarmed being, by the small bone
which is covered by the lips, by which also he is distinguished
from the apes and the other beasts like him.

It has been disputed whether brutes have the same affec-
tions¹⁾ of the mind as man. This is a very difficult question, if
we examine the ways in which men express joy and sorrow, and
especially laughter and tears. That animals can cry is certain,
since they have organs²⁾ exactly like those in man for weeping;
but we must go deeper and enquire whether they do so in con-
sequence of feeling sorrow. It is said to be so with some
animals, as the orang-utan³⁾, the sloth⁴⁾, seals⁵⁾, the horse⁶⁾, the
stag⁷⁾, the turtle⁸⁾, the tortoise⁹⁾, &c. The narrative of Steller,
amongst others, deserves certainly great credit; so that it is
probable that weeping from sadness is common to animals and
man. About laughter as the effect of joy there seems more
doubt. Some animals have peculiar ways of expressing¹⁰⁾ tran-
quillity or joy, but I do not think that a change in the muscles
of the face¹¹⁾, or the utterance of cacchination, has been observed
in any other animal but man. The croaking of apes, or the
cries of the sloth, have no more to do with this than the barking
of dogs, or the songs of birds, as the indications of joy.

Women have something peculiar, which seems to be denied
to all other animals, even if they remain untouched; I mean the
hymen, which has been granted to woman-kind perhaps much
more for moral reasons¹²⁾, than because it has any physical uses.

I am inclined to allow the menstrual flux to the females of
human kind alone¹⁾. There are some who say that some other
animals of that sex have also their menstrual excretions²⁾, and
Buffon³⁾ has particularly asserted this of many apes. The whole
point depends upon the notion of a periodic flux, which, if pro-
perly considered, will scarcely be allowed to apes. I have care-
fully observed many female apes of more than one species, and
that for many years, in the menagerie of Büttner, yet I cannot
undertake to say that they have menstrual excretions. Mean-
while it is certain that they are afflicted with hœmorrhages of
the womb, which however do not occur at any fixed period, but
sometimes after one week, and sometimes after three or more,
return in the same ape, which otherwise is enjoying good health;
in some however it never appears at all.

These two things then, the hymen and periodical menstru-
ation, I consider as peculiar to mankind⁴⁾. As to the clitoris and
the nymphæ⁵⁾, there is no doubt that other animals also have
them too; and in some the clitoris appears very large and
almost enormous. The hymen, the guardian of chastity, is
adapted to man who is alone endowed with reason; but the
clitoris, the obscene organ of brute pleasure, is given to beasts
also. A few examples are enough: in the papio mandril (Simia
maimonides Linn.) which I dissected last winter, I observed the
clitoris of half-an-ounce in weight, swelling, wrapped in a loose
prepuce, and so prominent that it might easily have made an
incautious observer think the animal was an hermaphrodite, and
all the more because a little fold, which was visible in the apex
of the member and impervious, increased the general resem-
blance to the virile gland. The nymphæ seemed worn down, or
had coalesced with the callous and gaping lips of the pudendum.
And I have observed those as well as the clitoris distinctly in a
Lemur Mongoz , which I myself saw alive last summer at Göttin-
[Seite 91] gen. The Didactylus ignavus of the Royal Museum has a very
round clitoris between the swelling lips of the pudendum. But
the great Haller has collected many instances¹⁾. These therefore
are some of the points which, are peculiar to mankind and which
can be easily distinguished without any very delicate anatomy.
I leave out others, as the immobility of the ears²⁾, or the hairs of
either eye-brow³⁾, which were formerly attributed to man alone.

A very extensive and at the same time a very pleasant field
would be open to us, if we could now investigate the internal
structure of the human body, in so far as it differs plainly from
the structure of other animals. But the limits of this our book
do not allow us to wander so far. It is therefore the business
of those who want information on these points to go to the
authors of comparative anatomy, and, above all, to those who
have dissected carefully the animals which are most like man;
amongst whom it will be sufficient to mention Eustachius⁴⁾,
Coiter⁵⁾, Riolani⁶⁾, and Tyson⁷⁾. Let them study those who think
that perhaps the orang-utan and some other apes are not so
much unlike man, but that they may be considered as of the
same species, or, at all events, as animals very closely allied to
man. It is now my present intention to select a few points
from many, and reckon them up briefly.

As the brain, the most noble entrail of the animal body, for
numberless reasons which everybody knows, demands particular
attention beyond all other parts, men of the greatest reputation
have laboured⁸⁾ on its comparative anatomy and have stirred up
others⁹⁾, when there was an opportunity, to similar labours.

Recollecting this, as I have been fortunate enough to dissect
apes, last winter, of more than one kind, I have, above all,
investigated their brains, and I exhibit as a specimen the base
of one¹⁾. It is the brain of that very mandril I was just speak-
ing of. Cut off at the great occipital foramen, and taken out
of the skull, it weighed three ounces and one drachm, whilst
the rest of the body of the ape weighed eight common pounds
and a half. The principal points in which its base differs from
the human organ are these. The two anterior lobes of the
brain are almost entirely unified. The cerebellum is large in
proportion to the brain, more than is the case with the pygmy.
The pons varolii is separated from the medulla oblongata by no
apparent fissure, but is joined on, and down continuously with
it. Not a vestige of the pyramidal or olivary bodies, as is also
the case in the pygmy. The medulla oblongata much thicker
than in the man or the pygmy. The second pair of nerves
which were united in one great mass and then again divided
at the very entrance of the orbits, was cut off before the sepa-
ration. No rete mirabile. I omit other things of less import-
ance, which any one who is skilled in anatomy will easily
recognize; and I can assure such an one that the figure is
most accurately drawn²⁾.

I have subjoined to the brain the skull of the same papio,
in which, besides the deeper orbits, the thickness of the zygomata,
the widely divergent teeth, the immense canines, and other
things of smaller importance, that peculiar bone in which the
incisors are set deserves particular attention. This man is with-
out, although all the apes and most of the other mammals³⁾
have it. I doubted whether it was to be found in the orang-utan;
since in the figures of Tyson⁴⁾ and Daubenton⁵⁾ the skulls were
not drawn in such a way that the sutures could be well distin-
[Seite 93] guished¹⁾: nor did the English author speak precisely about
it²⁾: but Fr. Gabr. Sulzer has settled the point, for he kindly
writes me word that Camper, a great authority, has dissected
animals of this kind, and found this bone in them. Another
difference flows from this singular structure, namely, in the
bone of the nose, which is double in the human head, and
nearly of a rhomboidal figure, whereas it is seen to be single in
the apes, and also triangular, which however, like the other
things which may be observed in this figure, are very patent,
and will easily be seen by those who know anything of osteology,
and therefore do not want any further explanation.

Amongst other differences between the human body and
that of the beasts there are some which are better known,
and may be briefly touched upon. As, for example, the mem-
brana nictitans, periophthalmium, or third eyelid, which Haller³⁾
says is in man a very slight imitation of the organ in animals,
although in animals also according to their class and order,
their mode of life, and their size, it differs much in position and
constitution⁴⁾.

Besides this, the bulbous or suspensory muscle of the eye is
common to nearly all⁵⁾ quadrupeds, and so is the suspensory liga-
ment of the neck, which is said to be wanting in man and the
apes alone⁶⁾. This white and tendonous part which is known to
[Seite 94] everybody, and is called by my countrymen, haarwachs; by the
English¹⁾, packwax, taxwax, fixfax and whiteleather; by the
Belgians²⁾, vast, &c. is inserted for the purpose of sustaining the
head and neck of quadrupeds³⁾. But although man shares the
absence of this with the apes, yet it by no means follows that
apes are meant to walk upright, since in them the subtle
structure of the vertebræ of the neck, and in man the peculiar
bipedal walk, supply the defect of this ligament. The whole
point about the bodies of these vertebræ is best explained
by a comparison of these bones themselves, as they appear
in the skeleton of the man and the ape, and for this reason
I have had engraved the whole construction of the vertebræ of
the neck in the same papio⁴⁾ (Pl. II. fig. 1), the base of whose
brain and whose skull we have just seen, because in that it
may be seen as clearly as possible why he scarcely ever goes
on two feet, I have subjoined the fifth and sixth vertebra
of the human neck (Pl. II. fig. 2). In these the bodies are
nearly parallel, and almost disciform, whereas in the ape they
descend by a sort of scaly process in front, and one is placed
upon and dove-tailed into the other. So it can easily be made
plain by experiment that the vertebræ in these animals sup-
port each other, and serve to sustain the head, which could not
be done with man if placed in a quadrupedal position, on ac-
count of the smooth surfaces of the body of the vertebræ, for so
it would be excessively difficult to sustain the mass of the very
heavy human head, which would more and more collapse and
subside by its own weight.

I have selected a few out of many points in which man differs
most clearly from the other animals. I have said that there are
many which go to demonstrate his natural position to be an erect
one, and to separate him fairly from the apes, especially from the
orang-utan. I have been induced to do this because of the
[Seite 95] opinions lately expressed by some famous men¹⁾, who however
are ill-instructed in natural history and anatomy, but who are
not ashamed to say that this ape is very nearly allied, and indeed
of the same species with themselves.

I do not think this opinion deserves any lengthened refuta-
tion for those who are adepts in the matter; but it will clearly
not be foreign to our purpose if I say a few words about the
orang-utan himself. After the labours of Buffon and others it is
not worth while to spend any time on his habits and mode of
life²⁾. But it would be worth while if the species were a little
more accurately defined. For although this remarkable animal
has very seldom been seen in Europe, and few authentic repre-
sentations of it exist, still such as they are they differ so much
from each other that they can in no way be considered as belong-
ing to one and the same species. I shall pass by the delineations
which are manifestly fictitious, or carelessly drawn, such as those
of Bontius, Neuhof, Jürgen Andersen, Jo. Jac. Saar, and Franc.
Leguat; and examine more closely the authentic ones alone.
These are those of Tulp, Tyson, Edwards, Scotin³⁾, Le Cat, and
Buffon, which when they are compared together manifestly
differ very much both in form and size. Recent authors have
deduced from this a variety of species, and have called one the
larger, and the other the smaller orang-utan. I do not however
place much trust in this distinction. Some of the specimens
which have been brought to Europe were very young, and there
were indications which, considering that they all died prema-
turely⁴⁾, forbid us to come to any conclusion as to their size. Still
[Seite 96] the habit of their whole body and the conformation of its parts
seem to me much more justly to constitute them into species.
I may be allowed therefore to admit at least two species, and
in order that names may not be unnecessarily multiplied, I shall
give them some which occur in Linnæus, one which has been
improperly appended to man by that illustrious author, the other
to the first species of apes. Let there be then, –

1. Simia troglodytes or Chimpansi; represented by Tulp
and Scotin, macrocephalous, sinewy, hairy on the back of its
body alone; the front, except the shoulders, being bare.

2. Satyrus or Orang-utan of Tyson, Edwards, Le Cat, and
Buffon; rather slender, with small head, clothed with thick hair,
the hairs of the arm and fore-arm being in opposite directions.
Such was the male which I mentioned having seen alive at Jena.
It came very near to the figure of Tyson, and at the first glance
was most unmistakeably different from the Simia sylvanus, &c.
I made a drawing at that time of this rare animal, but I regret
that I neglected to measure its parts more accurately.

These are the observations made partly by myself, and partly
by my first preceptor in natural history, I. E. Im. Walch. The
stature was that of a boy about ten years old, colour brown,
face sufficiently human, the fingers of the hands and feet rather
long, the thumb widely separated, the calves more fleshy than
in other apes, the scrotum pendulous almost square, rather
white, the penis small like Tyson's figure. It was so much in
the habit of leaning on a stick, that though it could stand and
walk on two feet, most persons would attribute that way of
walking to the effect of education. The same might be said of
his way of drinking and eating, in which actions he used spoon
and cup. He showed a great desire for the other sex.

Linnæus doubted whether the animals which we have
divided into two species, but which in his opinion were only
varieties, differed in anything more than in sex. It is quite true
that those represented by Tulp and Scotin were females, and the
others males; but still the silence of travellers and eye-witnesses
like Bontius and Th. Bowrey, on any different form in the sexes,
convinces me that besides the difference of sex there must also
[Seite 97] be a variety of species. I cannot dismiss these animals without
mentioning two points, of which one is concerned with a singu-
lar character of them which has been generally neglected, and
the other regards their native country. I owe the knowledge of
the former character to my great friend Sulzer, who repeated to
me the words of Camper, who, I just mentioned, dissected these
Satyri himself, ‘“that in the front hands of these animals the
nails of the thumbs were wanting.”’ There are indeed nails in the
plates of Tyson, Edwards, and Le Cat; but that singular and
paradoxical character might very easily have been unnoticed; nor
did I pay any attention myself to the nails of the Jena satyr.
Was this a third species? that I cannot decide. The other
point that remains to be mentioned is as to the native country
of both species (chimpansi and orang-utan). By almost all zoo-
logical writers the torrid zone of the ancient world is given out
as their native country. Bancroft¹⁾ however relates a report of the
inhabitants, that the orang-utan may also be found in the thick
woods of Guiana. This account deserves further attention, but
there is this against it, that the author adds that the animal has
not yet been seen by Europeans resident there.

There is another animal nearly allied to the Troglodyte and
the Satyr, which is the Simia longimana (Homo Lar, Linn., Gib-
bon, Buff.), an animal exactly like man, if you look at its face:
but differing from almost all other animals if you consider the
enormous length of its anterior feet. They are indeed represented
as somewhat shorter in the figure of the Bengalese ape, which
is inserted in the Philosophical Transactions²⁾, and taken for the
S. longimana, which however is clearly drawn by the hand of
no artist, as is shown by the unequal length of either fore arm,
and by other particulars.

Enough then has been said about the Troglodyte and Satyr.
And now we must come more closely to the principal argument
of our dissertation, which is concerned with this question; Are
[Seite 98] men, and have the men of all times and of every race been of one
and the same, or clearly of more than one species? A question
much discussed in these days, but so far as I know, seldom
expressly treated of.

Ill-feeling, negligence, and the love of novelty have induced
persons to take up the latter opinion. The idea of the plurality
of human species has found particular favour¹⁾ with those who
made it their business to throw doubt on the accuracy of Scrip-
ture. For on the first discovery of the Ethiopians, or the beard-
less inhabitants of America, it was much easier to pronounce
them different species²⁾ than to inquire into the structure of the
human body, to consult the numerous anatomical authors and
travellers, and carefully to weigh their good faith or carelessness,
to compare parallel examples from the universal circuit of natural
history, and then at last to come to an opinion, and investigate
the causes of the variety. For such is the subtlety of the
human intellect, and such the rush for novelty, that many would
rather accept a new, though insufficiently considered opinion,
than subscribe to ancient truths which have been commonly
accepted for thousands of years.

I have endeavoured to keep free of all these mistakes; I
have written this book quite unprejudiced, and I have desired
nothing so much as that the arguments which I have brought
forward for the unity of the human species, and for its mere
varieties, may seem as satisfactory to my learned and candid
readers as they do to myself.

For although there seems to be so great a difference between
widely separate nations, that you might easily take the inhabi-
tants of the Cape of Good Hope, the Greenlanders, and the Cir-
cassians for so many different species of man, yet when the
matter is thoroughly considered, you see that all do so run into
one another, and that one variety of mankind does so sensibly
[Seite 99] pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between
them.

Very arbitrary indeed both in number and definition have
been the varieties of mankind accepted by eminent men. Lin-
næus¹⁾ allotted four classes of inhabitants to the four quarters of
the globe respectively. Oliver Goldsmith²⁾ reckons six. I have
followed Linnæus in the number, but have defined my varieties
by other boundaries. The first and most important to us (which
is also the primitive one) is that of Europe, Asia this side of the
Ganges, and all the country situated to the north of the Amoor,
together with that part of North America, which is nearest both
in position³⁾ and character of the inhabitants. Though the men of
these countries seem to differ very much amongst each other in
form and colour, still when they are looked at as a whole they
seem to agree in many things with ourselves. The second in-
cludes that part of Asia beyond the Ganges, and below the river
Amoor, which looks towards the south, together with the islands,
and the greater part of those countries which are now called
Australian. Men of dark colour, snub noses, with winking eye-
lids drawn outwards at the corners, scanty, and stiff hair. Africa
makes up the third. There remains finally, for the fourth, the
rest of America, except so much of the North as was included
in the first variety⁴⁾.

It will easily appear from the progress of this dissertation in
[Seite 100] which of the four varieties most discrepancies are still to be
found, and on the contrary, that many in other varieties have
some points in common, or in some anomalous way differ from
the rest of their neighbours. Still it will be found serviceable
to the memory to have constituted certain classes into which, the
men of our planet may be divided; and this I hope I have not
altogether failed in doing, since for the reason I have given
before I have tried this and that, but found them less satisfac-
tory. Now I mean to go over, one by one the points in which
man seems to differ from man by the natural conformation of his
body and in appearance, and I will investigate as far as I can
the causes which tend to produce that variety.

First of all I shall speak of the whole bodily constitution,
stature, and colour, and then I shall go on to the particular
structure and proportion of individual parts. It will then be ne-
cessary carefully to distinguish those points which are due to art
alone, and finally, though with reluctance, I shall touch upon
[Seite 101] nosology and practical medicine, both which chapters recent
authors have tried to obtrude into natural history, but which
I shall endeavour to vindicate for and restore to pathology.

The first three things I mean to discuss, the whole bodily
constitution, the stature, and the colour, are owing almost en-
tirely to climate alone. I must be brief on the first of these
points, since I have had no opportunity of exercising my personal
observation on the matter, and but few and scanty traces are to
be gathered from authors. That in hot countries bodies become
drier and heavier; in cold and wet ones softer, more full of
juice and spongy, is easily noticed. It has long since been
noticed by W. Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, that the bones
of the wild horse have very small cavities, and those of the
Frisian horses much larger ones¹⁾, &c. This was confirmed by
the elegant experiments of Kersting, a physician of Cassel, and
a most skilled in the treatment of animals. He observed²⁾,
amongst other things, that the bones of an Arab horse, of six
years old, when subjected to the same degree of heat, were dis-
solved with much more difficulty in the machine of Papinus than
those of a Frisian of the same age. It is very likely that similar
differences would be observed in the bones of men born in
different countries, although observations are wanting, and con-
clusions drawn from a few facts are unsatisfactory. Here and
there indeed we find bones of Ethiopians³⁾ which are thick, com-
pact, and hard; but I should be unwilling to attribute these
properties to every skeleton coming from hot countries, since
other instances occur of skulls of Ethiopians, about which the
same remark has not been made⁴⁾. The differences moreover are
very great between the skulls of Europeans of the same country
and the same age, which seem to depend, amongst other things,
[Seite 102] principally upon the mode of life¹⁾. Perhaps the same is the
case as to the sutures, which Arrian²⁾ says the heads of the
Ethiopians are without, and Herodotus³⁾ says the same of the
Persian skulls after the battle of Platæa. The observation
about the whole habit of the body, that the northern⁴⁾ nations
are more sinewy and square, and the southern⁵⁾ more elegant,
seems more reliable.

I go on to the human stature. It is an old opinion, that in
very ancient times men were much larger and taller, and that
they degenerate and diminish in size even now, that children
are now born smaller than their parents, and all the things of
this kind which the old poets⁶⁾ and philosophers⁷⁾ have said to
discredit their own times.

But although this may be going too far, still we must allow
something to climate, so far as that itself is altered by the lapse
of time. The soil itself becomes milder, so that it may at last
make its men less gigantic and less fierce. We have already
spoken of an example of this change in our own Germany.
But the idea that these differences of bodies in ancient and
modern times have been enormous, is refuted by the mummies
of Egypt, the fossil human skeletons⁸⁾, the sarcophagi, and a
thousand other proofs.

Nor do a few skulls conspicuous for their age and size⁹⁾, scat-
[Seite 103] tered about here and there, prove anything more than those solid
ones destitute of sutures, about which I was lately speaking.
Some, it is clear, are diseased¹⁾. But as to the bones which cre-
dulous antiquity showed as those of giants, they have long
since been restored to elephants and whales²⁾. The investigation
of the causes which in our days make the men of one country
tall and another short is more subtle. The principal one seems
to be the degree of cold or heat. The latter obstructs the
increase of organic bodies, whilst the former adds to them
and promotes their growth. It would be tedious even to touch
upon a thing so well known and so much confirmed in both king-
doms, were it not that in our time men have come forward, and
with the greatest confidence have presumed to think otherwise³⁾.
Experience teaches that both plants and animals are smaller in
northern countries than in southern; why should not the same
law hold good as to mankind? Linnæus long ago remarked in
his Flora Lapponica⁴⁾, that alpine plants commonly reached
twice as great an altitude out of the Alps. And the same thing
may be observed frequently in those plants, some specimens of
which are kept in a conservatory, while others stand out in a
garden, of which the former come out much larger and taller
than the others.

I have before me the most splendid specimens in a collection
of plants from Labrador and Greenland, chosen by Brasen⁵⁾,
which I owe to the liberality of my great friend, J. Sam. Lieber-
kühn, in which the common ones are almost all smaller than
those which are obtained in Germany; and in some, as the
[Seite 104] Rhodiola rosea, which are common to both those regions of
America, although their native soil is so near, yet the same
difference is observed that the specimens from Labrador are
somewhat larger than those from Greenland.

The same is the case with animals. The Greenland foxes
are smaller than those of the temperate zone¹⁾. The Swedish
and Scotch horses are low and small, and in the coldest part
of North Wales so little as scarcely to exceed dogs in size²⁾. It is
however useless to bring a long string of examples about a thing
so evident, when the difference of a few degrees in so many
countries exhibits clearly the same difference. Thus, Henry
Ellis³⁾ observed in Hudson's Strait, on its southern coasts, trees
and men of fair size; at 61° shrubs only, and that the men
became smaller by little and little, and at last at 67° that not a
vestige of either was to be seen. And likewise Murray, within
the limits of a few degrees, and in Gotha alone, declared he
could observe so well, that whilst he was travelling, although he
took no notice of the mile-stones, yet he could easily distinguish
the different provinces by the difference of the inhabitants and
of the animals. In Scania⁴⁾ the men are tall of stature and bony,
the horses and cattle large, &c.: in Smaland they become sensi-
bly smaller, and the cattle are active but little, which at last
in Ostrogothia strikes the eye more and more.

The same thing may be observed in the opposite part of the
world, almost under the same degrees, towards the antarctic cir-
cle. One example will suffice, taken from the most southern
part of America, and compared with those European nations we
have just been speaking of. The bodies of the notorious Pata-
gonians answer to the lofty stature of the Scandinavians. A
credulous antiquity indeed invented fabulous stories of their
enormous size⁵⁾. But in the progress of time, after Patagonia
[Seite 105] had often been visited by Europeans, the inhabitants, like that
famous dog of Gellert, became sensibly smaller, until at last in
our own days they retained indeed a sufficiently large stature,
but were happily deprived of their gigantic form. If you go
down from them towards the south, you will find much smaller
men in the cold land of Terra del Fuego¹⁾, who must be compared
to the Smalands and the Ostrogoths, and by that example you
will again see how nature is always like itself even in the most
widely separated regions.

But besides the climate, there are other causes which exercise
influence upon stature. Already, at first, I alluded to the mode
of life²⁾, and it would be easy to bring here copious examples
taken from the vegetable and animal kingdoms, in which the
difference of nutrition may be detected by the greater or smaller
stature. But these things are too well known already, and so
many experiments of the kind have been made on Swiss cows,
Frisian horses, &c., that I may easily pass over any proofs of this
point. I omit also the causes of smaller importance which
change the stature of organic bodies, which have been already
most diligently handled by Haller³⁾, and I hasten to the last of
those things which must be considered in the variety of mankind,
that is, colour.

There seems to be so great a difference between the Ethiop-
ian, the white, and the red American, that it is not wonderful,
if men even of great reputation have considered them as forming
different species of mankind. But although the discussion of
this subject seems particularly to belong to our business, still so
many important things have been said about the seat and the
causes of this diversity of colour, by eminent men, that a good-
sized volume would scarcely contain them; so that it is necessary
for me to be brief in this matter, and only to mention those
things which the industry of learned men has placed beyond
all doubt. The skin of man and of most animals consists of
[Seite 106] three parts; the external epidermis, or cuticle; the reticulum
mucosum, called from its discoverer the Malphigian; and lastly,
the inner, or corium. The middle of these, which very much
resembles the external, so that by many it is considered as
another scale of it, is evidently more spongy, thick, and black
in the Ethiopians; and in them, as in the rest of men, is the
primary seat of the diversity of colour. For in all the corium is
white, excepting where, here and there, it is slightly coloured by
the adhering reticulum; but the epidermis seems to shade off into
the same colour as the reticulum, yet still so, that being diaphan-
ous¹⁾ like a plate of horn, it appears even in black men, if pro-
perly separated, to be scarcely grey; and therefore can have
little if any influence on the diversity of the colour of men.

The seat of colour is pretty clear, but for a very long time
back there have been many and great disputes about the causes
of it, especially in the Ethiopians. Some think it to be a sign of
the curse of Cain²⁾ or Cham³⁾, and their posterity; others⁴⁾ have
brought forward other hypotheses, amongst which the bile played
the most prominent part, and this was particularly advocated by
Peter Barrere⁵⁾, following D. Santorini⁶⁾. Although this view
has been opposed by many⁷⁾, I do not think it ought altogether
to be neglected. The instances of persons affected with jaundice,
or chlorosis, of the fish mullet⁸⁾, and moreover the black bile⁹⁾ of
the Ethiopians, are all the less open to doubt, since more recent
authors¹⁰⁾ have observed the blood to be black, and the brain and
the spinal marrow to be of an ashy colour; and the phlegm of
[Seite 107] the northern nations and other things of this kind seem to add
weight to this opinion. Bat amongst all other causes of their
blackness, climate, and the influence of the soil, and the tempe-
rature, together with the mode of life, have the greatest influ-
ence. This is the old opinion of Aristotle, Alexander, Strabo,
and others¹⁾, and one which we will try and confirm by instances
and arguments brought forward separately.

In the first place, then, there is an almost insensible and in-
definable transition from the pure white skin of the German
lady through the yellow, the red, and the dark nations, to the
Ethiopian of the very deepest black, and we may observe this,
as we said just now in the case of stature, in the space of a few
degrees of latitude. Spain offers some trite examples; it is well
known that the Biscayan women are a shining white, the inha-
bitants of Granada on the contrary dark, to such an extent that
in this region the pictures of the Blessed Virgin and other saints
are painted of the same colour²⁾. Those who live upon, the
northern bank of the river Senegal are of ashy colour and
small body; but those beyond are black, of tall stature and
robust, as if in that part of the world one district was green, and
the other burnt up³⁾. And the same thing was observed by some
learned Frenchmen on the Cordilleras, that those who live im-
mediately under the mountains towards the west, and exposed
to the Pacific Ocean, seem almost as white as Europeans,
whereas on the contrary, the inhabitants of the opposite side,
who are exposed to constant burning winds, are like the rest of
the Americans, copper-coloured⁴⁾.

It is an old observation of Vitruvius⁵⁾ and Pliny⁶⁾ that the
northern nations are white, and this is clearly enough shown by
many instances of other animals and plants. For partly the
[Seite 108] flowers¹⁾ of plants, like the animals of the northern regions, are
white, though they produce other colours in more southern lati-
tudes; and partly in the more temperate zones animals only be-
come white in winter, and in spring put on again their own natural
colour. Of the former we have instances in the wolves²⁾, dogs³⁾,
hares⁴⁾, cattle⁵⁾, crows⁶⁾, the chaffinch⁷⁾, &c., of the latter in the er-
mines⁸⁾, the squirrels⁹⁾, hares¹⁰⁾, the ptarmigan¹¹⁾, the Corsican dog¹²⁾.
All of us are born nearly red, and at last in progress of time the
skin of the Ethiopian infants turns to black¹³⁾, and ours to white,
whereas in the American the primitive red colour remains, except-
ing so far as that by change of climate and the effects of their mode
of life those colours sensibly change, and as it were degenerate.

It is scarce worth while to notice the well-known difference
which occurs in the inhabitants of one and the same country,
whose skin varies wonderfully in colour, according to the kind of
life that they lead. The face of the working man or the artizan,
exposed to the force of the sun and the weather, differs as much
from the cheeks of a delicate female, as the man himself does
from the dark American, and he again from the Ethiopian.
Anatomists not unfrequently fall in with the corpses of the lowest
sort of men, whose reticulum comes much nearer to the black-
ness of the Ethiopians than to the brilliancy of the higher class
of European. Such an European, blacker than an Ethiop, was
dissected by Chr. Gottl. Ludwig¹⁴⁾; a very dark reticulum has
been observed by Günz¹⁵⁾, and very frequently by many others¹⁶⁾;
[Seite 109] and I recollect that I myself dissected at Jena a man's corpse of
this kind, whose whole skin was brown, and in some parts, as in
the scrotum, almost black; for it is well known that some parts
of the human body become more black than others, as, for ex-
ample, the genitals of either sex, the tips of the breasts, and
other parts which easily verge towards a dark colour. Haller ob-
served in the groin of a woman the reticulum so black¹⁾ that it did
not seem to differ much from that of an Ethiopian; one as dark
in the groin of a man was in the possession of B. S. Albinus; and
it is so common an occurrence in a woman's breast, that I cannot
be enough astonished that eminent men have been found to
reckon the dark teats of the Samoyeds as prodigies²⁾, and there-
fore to consider that nation as a particular species of man³⁾.

Such a diversity of the reticulum is seen in other animals
also, and especially in the face of the Papio mandril, a part of
which I have therefore had engraved, (Pl. II. fig. 3.) There is
a region of the upper part of the eyelids, of the root of the nose,
and of the eye-brows, in which you may observe almost every
variety of reticulum; the nose is plainly black, and also the part
where the eye-brows are inserted; but that part which is lower
and more on the outside is sensibly brown, and at length
towards the outer comers of the eyes becomes pale. Not indeed
that I have found this blackness of the nose equally intense in
all the specimens of this ape which I have seen, since in apes, as
in man and in other animals, the greatest variety of colour
occurs in the reticulum. In two specimens of the Simia cyno-
molgus the tint of the face was not very different from that of an
Ethiopian or a dark European; and this difference is so well
known and so common throughout the animal kingdom, espe-
cially in the domestic quadrupeds, but above all in the vegetable⁴⁾
[Seite 110] kingdom, that I can scarcely take notice of it, but prefer to re-
turn at once to man.

We see white men in a lower class rendered brown by a hard
life; and it is equally certain that men of southern regions
become whiter when they are less exposed to the effects of
the weather and the sun. We have the most copious accounts
by travellers of the inhabitants of Guzerat¹⁾, of the Malabar
coast²⁾, of the Caffres³⁾, of the Canadians⁴⁾, and the Otaheitans⁵⁾.
But besides their mode of life, old age and the change of country
have an influence in making the Ethiopians more white. For
when the Ethiopians begin to approach their seventieth year,
the reticulum sensibly loses its dark colour, so that at last the
bulbs come out yellow⁶⁾, and the hair and beard are grey like
other nations; and if the young Ethiopian infants are brought
into colder climates, it is certain that they lose a sensible quan-
tity of their blackness⁷⁾, and their colour begins to verge more
and more towards brown.

On the other hand, it is apparent that when white men re-
side a considerable time in the torrid zones they become brown,
and sensibly verge towards black with much greater facility.
[Seite 111] The Spaniards who dwell under the equator in the new world
have so much degenerated towards the native colour of the soil,
that it has seemed very probable to eminent men¹⁾, that had they
not taken care to preserve their paternal constitution by inter-
marrying with Europeans, but had chosen to follow the same
kind of life as the American nations, in a short time they would
have fallen into almost the same coloration, which we see in the
natives of South America. An Englishman who had spent only
three years with the Virginians, became exactly like them in
colour, and Smith²⁾, his countryman, could only recognize him by
his language. A colony of Portuguese, who were carried to
Africa³⁾ in the fifteenth century, can scarcely now be distinguished
from the aborigines. The French, whether they emigrate to
Africa or America, are invariably tinged with the brown colour
of those countries⁴⁾. I do not adduce here the numerous exam-
ples of Europeans who have become unnaturally black in their
own country⁵⁾, or have brought forth black children⁶⁾, nor of
Ethiopians who have been, at all events in some parts of their
bodies, suddenly turned white⁷⁾, since all these cases seem to in-
clude something diseased or morbid.

As by the climate so also by the mode of life the colours of
the body are seen to be changed. And this appears most clearly
in the unions of people of different tints, in which cases the
most distinct and contrary colours so degenerate, that white men.
may sensibly pass and be changed into black, and the contrary.
The hybrid offspring (if we may use that word) are distin-
guished by particular names; in using which, however, the
authors of travels vary so much, that it seemed to me worth
while to collect as many of these synonyms as I could, to reduce
them into grades of descending affinity, and exhibit them in
a synoptic form.

1. The offspring of a black man and a white woman, or
the reverse, is called Mulatto¹⁾ , Mollaka²⁾ , Melatta; by the
Italians, Bertin, Creole and Criole³⁾; by the inhabitans of Ma-
labar, Mestiço⁴⁾. The offspring of an American man and an
European woman, Mameluck⁵⁾, and Metif⁶⁾.

2. The offspring of an European male with a Mulatto
female is called Terceron⁷⁾ , Castiço⁸⁾. The son of an European
female from a Metif is called a Quarteroon⁹⁾. The offspring of
two Mulattoes is called Casque¹⁰⁾; and of blacks and Mulattoes,
Griffs¹¹⁾.

3. A Terceron female and an European produce quaterons¹²⁾,
postiços¹³⁾. But the American quarteroon (who is of the same
degree as the black Terceron) produces from an European
octavoons¹⁴⁾.

4. The offspring of a quateroon male and a white female,
a quinteroon¹⁵⁾; the child of an European woman with an Ame-
rican octavoon is called by the Spaniards Puchuela¹⁶⁾.

It is plain therefore that the traces of blackness are pro-
pagated to great-grandchildren; but they do not keep completely
[Seite 113] the degrees we have just noticed, for twins sometimes are born of
different colours; such as Fermin¹⁾ says came from an Ethiopian
woman, of which the male was a mulatto, but the female, like
the mother, an intense black. And from all these cases, this
is clearly proved, which I have been endeavouring by what has
been said to demonstrate, that colour, whatever be its cause, be
it bile, or the influence of the sun, the air, or the climate, is,
at all events, an adventitious and easily changeable thing, and
can never constitute a diversity of species.

A great deal of weight has attached to this opinion in con-
sequence of the well-known examples of those men, whose
reticulum has been conspicuously variegated and spotted with
different colours. Lamothe²⁾ has described very carefully a boy
of this kind from the Antilles. Labat³⁾ saw the wife of a
Grifole like this, a native of Cayenne, and in other respects
handsome. Chr. D. Schreber⁴⁾ has collected many examples; and
I myself had lately an opportunity of seeing an instance of this
sort of variegated skin. One of my friends, a physician, has a
reticulum of almost a purple colour, and distinctly marked with
very white spots, of different sizes, but equal in other respects,
and similar to the most shining skin. And on the back of his
light hand there were five white spots of the same kind, of which
each was almost equal to a thumb's breadth in diameter, inter-
spersed with numerous smaller ones. This phenomenon very
seldom occurs in men; but is very common in animals, espe-
cially in the reticulum of quadrupeds. The throats of rams, for
example, are frequently so variegated, that yon may observe in
them the greatest similarity, both to the black skin of the
Ethiop and the white skin of the European. I have examined
many flocks of sheep in their pastures with this object, and
I think I have observed, that the greater or smaller number of
black spots in the jaws answer to the greater or smaller quan-
tity of black wool on the animals themselves.

I will say no more of colour; and now, having disposed of all
the general varieties of the whole human body, I will go on to
the diversity of the separate parts and members; and will make.
a beginning with the head and its conformation. In the same
way that it is always the case that there is the greatest possible
difference between the skeleton of the embryo and the adult,
so above all, the bones of the skull differ to such an extent
in both, that you would scarcely recognize them as parts of the
same body. For the bones which, in the adult, constitute a
very solid case, and the hardest possible receptacle of what
is at once the softest and noblest entrail, in the embryo appear
only as thin but broad scales, ‘“which,”’ to use the words of
Coiter¹⁾, ‘“are just fastened together by soft, broad, loose and
flaccid bonds, sutures and commissures.”’ Now the skull of the
infant is wet and soft clay, and fit to be moulded into many
forms before it is perfectly solidified, so that if you consider the
innumerable and simultaneous external and adventitious causes
in operation, you will no longer be able to wonder that the
forms of skulls in adults should be different. But since for
a considerable period of time singular shapes of the head have
belonged to particular nations, and peculiar skulls have been
shaped out, in some of them certainly by artificial means, it
will be our business to look at these things a little more care-
fully, and to consider how far they constitute different varieties
of the human race. For, although I only intend to reckon
up in a passing way those differences of the human body which
are due to art alone, still I intend to treat now a little more at
length upon that part of the argument which has to do with
skulls, since things very nearly allied may be conveniently
embraced and handled at the same time. Claudius Galen²⁾, be-
sides the common and symmetrical skull³⁾, had already described
other skulls, which in some of their parts manifestly differed
[Seite 115] from the common structure; and Andrew Vesalius¹⁾ and Barth.
Eustachius²⁾ endeavoured to draw figures of them. But the forms
of these skulls seem to be so arbitrary and so monstrous, that
they are of little or no use to us at present, and seem rather
to belong to some morbid constitutions of the bones than to
any natural varieties of heads. Let us follow nature herself,
and we shall reckon up the various shapes of the head in the
various nations, according to the four varieties of mankind
which we constituted.

To begin with Germany itself, Vesalius³⁾ says that its inhabit-
ants are generally remarkable for having the occiput compressed
and the head wide; and gives as a reason that infants in their
cradles generally sleep on their backs, and besides being wrapped
in swaddling-clothes, generally have their hands tied to their
sides. This author also saw in the cemeteries of Styria and
Carinthia wonderfully different skulls, which from their extraor-
dinary shape seemed to be sports of nature⁴⁾. Lauremberg⁵⁾ says
the female inhabitants of Hamburg of his day were long-
headed, because they by ligaments and a foolish practice were
accustomed to elongate the head from the birth. The Belgians
are said to have their skulls more oblong⁶⁾ than other nations,
because the mothers permit their infants to sleep wrapped up in
swaddling-clothes very much on the side and the temples⁷⁾; but
however the description of a Batavian skull by De Fischer does
not answer to this⁸⁾, who praises in it the bones of the skull for
being but little depressed around the sides, and making there
almost an equal arch. Albinus⁹⁾ declares that the skulls of the
[Seite 116] English, the Spanish, and French, are without any peculiarity of
structure at all; and he is in most respects a very accurate
observer of varieties of that kind. Christopher Pflug informed
Vesalius that the skulls of the inhabitants of the Styrian Alps
were of a singular shape. The same Vesalius is of opinion that
the heads of the Genoese, and still more of the Greeks and the
Turks, are nearly of the shape of a sphere, and that it is done
through the care of the midwives when they bring their assist-
ance, and sometimes through the great solicitude of the mothers¹⁾.

There is a passage in Hippocrates²⁾ about the skulls of the
Scythians, which is most worthy of notice. He says that after
they had applied artificial means for a very long period in
shaping their heads, at last a kind of natural degeneration had
taken place, so that in his day there was no more necessity for
manual pressure to arrive at the end in view, but that the skulls
grew up to be elongated of their own accord. And this kind of
thing should be examined in other varieties of mankind, espe-
cially as to form and colour, and their various causes, climate,
&c., which in the progress of time become hereditary and con-
stant, although they may have owed their first origin to adven-
titious causes. The nations towards our north have generally
flatter faces³⁾. Eber. Rosen is, so far as I know, the only writer
who says that the Lapps of Lulah can, for the most part by the
face being broad above⁴⁾, attenuated below, with the cheeks
falling in, and terminated in a long chin, be distinguished from
the other Scandinavians⁵⁾. J. B. de Fischer⁶⁾ has published a
drawing of a Calmuck's skull, and it is ugly, and nearly ap-
[Seite 117] proaches a square in shape, and in many ways testifies to barba-
rism. But this single example shows how unfair it is to draw
conclusions as to the conformation of a whole race from one or
two specimens. For Pallas¹⁾ describes the Calmucks as men of a
symmetrical, beautiful, and even round appearance, so that he
says their girls would find admirers in cultivated Europe. Nor
do the said skulls answer to the two very accurate representa-
tions of that Calmuck, a boy of eleven years old, who lately
came from Russia with the court of Darmstadt, drawings of
whom I received from Carlsruhe. They represent a young man
of handsome shape, lofty forehead and eye-brows; and whose
face agrees in this respect with the description of Pallas, and
diverges from the skull in question, that the mouth makes nearly
an equilateral triangle with the eyes furthest from it, which brings
out the head round instead of square. Passing from the most
north-easterly part of Asia by the Anadirski Archipelago into
North America, we come to the tribes whose name is derived
from the singular form of their heads²⁾. Either I am very much
mistaken, or it is a skull of this sort which has been described
by Winslow³⁾, and engraved by him. With its very protracted
occiput, its somewhat flat forehead, the shape of the orbits, and
other aberrations of that sort from the common structure, it seems
to present some similarity to the skull of a dog. We know at
present too little of the history of that country and its inhabit-
ants to be able to add the cause of that singular conformation:
but whatever it be, it seems that it must rather be in the mode
of life, since the same peculiarity is observed sometimes in the
skulls of Europeans. I myself have in my possession a skull,
very ancient, dug out last summer from the city cemetery, which
is as like that American in the points I have mentioned⁴⁾, and in
every thing else, as one egg is to another.

Finally, as to the inhabitants of Greenland, and of Labrador,
the former we are told by Cranz¹⁾, and the latter by Henry Ellis²⁾,
are longheaded and have flat faces. But I am afraid that the
accounts of these most trustworthy men have been badly under-
stood by many, who have thence come to the conclusion that
these nations are badly formed and almost monstrous in shape³⁾.
Cranz himself says that a great many Greenlanders are to be
found with faces so oblong that it is difficult to distinguish them
from Europeans⁴⁾; but as to the Esquimaux, I am led to a contrary
opinion by some very accurate drawings of three inhabitants of
Labrador, which have lately come into my possession, and are
painted in colours with great care by that excellent artist J.
Swertner, from copies sent by the Hernnhut Brothers, who have
an establishment there. One is a male; and the two females,
according to the custom of their nation, are clad with immense
greaves, nearly reaching to their hips, and one of them carries a
child in her right sandal⁵⁾; all however are of a reasonably sym-
metrical and well-proportioned form. The face of the male is
rather flat, and the nose but little prominent, though by no
means turned up, the body square, and the head large, so as to
be equal to the sixth part of his whole height; but the women
are taller, and are seven of their own heads in length⁶⁾; and if
you except their colour⁷⁾, which verges towards brown, are in
other respects of good appearance.

Let us turn to Asia, and look at our second variety, which
dwells beyond the Ganges, and on the Islands, &c. The first
[Seite 119] thing we see are the Aracani on the Ganges, who flatten the
foreheads of the newly-born with sheets of lead.

After these, going up to the Amur (Sahalien ula), the
northern termination of this variety, come the Chinese, who,
unless I am wrong, are less content than any other of the inha-
bitants of this world, with the natural conformation of their
body, and therefore use so many artificial means to distort it,
and squeeze it, that they differ from almost all other men in
most parts of their bodies. Their heads are usually oval, their
faces flat, their eyes narrow, drawn up towards the external
corners, their noses small, and all their other peculiarities of
this kind are well known from the numerous pictures of them,
and from their china and pottery figures. Those Chinese
whom Büttner saw at London, were exactly of this kind, and so
also was the great botanist Whang-at-tong (the yellow man of
the East), whose acquaintance was made there by Lichtenberg.
But these artificial ways of moulding the head seem to have
more to do with the soft parts of the face than the bony struc-
ture, for Daubenton¹⁾ reckons up many skulls of the Chinese and
Tartars, and declares that they differ in no way from the ordi-
nary skulls of Europeans. The other nations of this variety
looked at as a whole answer to those characters which I laid
down above as belonging to them.

The New Hollanders make such a transition to the third
variety, that we perceive a sensible progress in going from the
New Zealanders through the Otaheitans to the fourth. The
inhabitants of the Island Mallicolo²⁾, whom I was just speaking
of, differ from their neighbours by the strange form of head, in
which late travellers assure us they approach nearest to the
figure of apes³⁾. I do not see anything remarkable in the skulls
[Seite 120] of the remaining inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean; and so we will
go on to the third variety of mankind, that is, the African
nations, about whom we may be brief, since what there is to be
said about their skulls is of small importance. Those skulls of
mummies which I have seen are of round and spherical, but still
of elegant and symmetrical form.

The head of an Ethiop from the southern part of Africa has
been carefully described by J. Beni de Fischer, as I quoted
above¹⁾. Broader in the upper region, suddenly narrowed, sharp-
ened from the front towards the middle of the frontal bone and
over the eyes, and widely stretched out below these, and very
globular behind, he says that in its whole periphery it comes to
be nearly of a triangular shape. And yet this description is
scarcely satisfactory when I compare it with the Ethiopians that
I have seen myself and carefully examined, or with that skull of
Peter Pauw²⁾; for this latter, if you except the large occiput and
the narrow orbits, has very little resemblance to the description
and very accurate engraving of Fischer.

There remains the fourth variety of the human race belong-
ing to America³⁾, except that part we have just been speaking of.
The same thing may be said of the inhabitants of this quarter,
which I have just observed about the Chinese, that they take
great pains, and employ artificial means, to distort the natural
form of their bodies into some other. This is especially the case
with the head; and the most numerous evidences of the wonder-
ful ways in which they compress it are to be found in the stories
of travellers; but still we are deficient in any accurate examina-
[Seite 121] tions of skulls of this kind, nor is it sufficiently clear in what
parts of the head the greatest change takes place. J. Cardan¹⁾
said that the heads of the inhabitants of the old Portus Provin-
ciæ were square, and deficient in the occiput. Hunauld²⁾ has
exhibited the skull of a Carib, but it has been either so care-
lessly engraved, or is so misshapen, that I should prefer to con-
sider it as a monstrosity, than to believe such to be the osseous
conformation of a whole nation. The enormous bones of the
nose, the little holes which give an exit to the nerves and
arteries of the same size as the external auditory canal, the
angular and large-lobed zygoma, the upper jaw deeply incised
for the matrices of the teeth, and other things of this sort, excite
a suspicion that this drawing was done in a hurry³⁾. Finally, as
to North America, Charlevoix describes the heads of one of the
Canadian nations as globular, and the other as flat⁴⁾.

So much then about the shape of skulls. From what has
been said I trust that it is more than sufficiently clear, that
almost all the diversity of the form of the head in different
nations is to be attributed to the mode of life and to art:
although I should very willingly admit the position of Hippocra-
tes, that with the progress of time art may degenerate into a
second nature, since it has a very considerable influence in all
the other variations of mankind.

The physiognomy and the peculiar lineaments of the whole
countenance in different nations opens up a very vast and agree-
able field. In many they are sufficiently settled, and are such
faithful exponents of the climate and the mode of life, that even
after many generations spent in a foreign climate they can still
be recognized. But, besides other reasons, the want of suffi-
ciently faithful and accurately delineated pictures forbids me to
wander in that direction. I took a great deal of pains to com-
pare pictures drawn from the life of more remote and, at pre-
sent, little known nations; but I have been able to obtain very
[Seite 122] few; and there are not many authors of travels whose pictures,
so far as regards the likenesses of nations, can be trusted. If
you except the vast work of the brothers De Bry, the first
editions of the travels of Cornelius Le Brun, the Tartary of Nic.
Witsen, the diary of Sydney Parkinson, and the voyages of Cook
himself, and except some genuine representations scattered about
here and there in various books, especially in the work of
S. R Lavater on physiognomy, there are many nations of whom
you can find no trustworthy pictures.

Meanwhile, it will be enough to bring forward a few ex-
amples, of which the Jewish race presents the most notorious
and least deceptive, which can easily be recognized everywhere
by their eyes alone, which breathe of the East. The Vallones,
though they have lived among the Swedes for many years, still
preserve the lineaments of the face, which are peculiar to them,
and by which they can be distinguished at the first glance from
the aborigines¹⁾. The clear and open countenance of the Swiss,
the cheerful one of the young Savoyards, the manly and serious
Turks²⁾, the simple and guileless look of the nations of the
extreme north³⁾, can easily be distinguished, even by those least
skilled in physiognomy.

The matter is a little more difficult in some nations of the
south, especially in the west of Europe, who, it has been ob-
served by some eminent men, from some reason or other, are
cheerful and sanguine in youth, but, as manhood advances, be-
come more morose, and inclined to be of a melancholy tem-
perament⁴⁾. In our other varieties the lineaments of the face
are very much more persistent. To say nothing of the Chinese,
who I have mentioned make their heads so much out of shape
that it would be hazardous to say how much in them is to
[Seite 123] be referred to nature and how much to art, the inhabitants of
the Pacific Ocean retain evident examples of persistent physio-
gnomy. Every one, for instance, will recognize the fierce and
savage countenance of the New-Hollanders and New-Zealanders
by looking at the magnificent plates of Parkinson¹⁾, whereas the
Otaheitans, on the contrary, looked at as a whole, seem to be
of a milder disposition, as also the many pictures²⁾ of them by
the same well-known author testify³⁾.

Although almost all the nations of Africa are sufficiently dis-
tinguished by persistent and peculiar lineaments of face, still the
ancient Egyptians, and the inhabitants of the south of Africa,
differ very much by their singular physiognomy from the rest,
both of the Africans and of mankind. All the monuments of the
old art of the ancient Egyptians, from the statue of Memnon down
to the pottery seals which are found with the mummies, show
likenesses very similar, and all closely resembling each other.
The face is somewhat long, but by no means emaciated, the nose
prominent, broad towards the nostrils, and ending in a sharpish
lobe, and finally the mouth small, girdled with swelling lips, all of
which are most positive and unmistakeable signs of the Egyp-
tian head. The appearance of the Ethiopians is so well known
that it would be superfluous to say much on that point. Their
depressed nose, which has been attributed by some to art⁴⁾, most
recent authors, and those eye-witnesses, have shown to be due
to nature⁵⁾, and the two Ethiopian fœtuses preserved in the
Royal Museum are exactly like the figures of Ruysch⁶⁾ and
Seba⁷⁾, and answer to this description. For although the nose
in almost all human embryos is depressed, still the Ethiopians
[Seite 124] of whom we are speaking have their noses, or interstices (to
use the expression of Isidore) so expanded, that even setting
aside the swelling lips, any one could tell the nation from them
alone.

A few variations of the human body remain besides those
which I think should be attributed to art alone, and which
have to do with the peculiar formation of members and parts.
The hair varies very much amongst most men, both in colour
and form, but in some nations is of a constant character. And
as it is said to be universal that white colours obtain more in
the north, and brown in the south, so black hair and black eyes
seem to be usual in the torrid zones, and light hair with blue
eyes in the colder regions¹⁾. But, beyond all, the hair of the
Ethiopians is conspicuous for its intense black and its singular
woolliness, which however is no more congenital with them than
the colour of their skin, but both have been contracted, as
we have seen, by the progress of time and the heat of the sun²⁾.
For the Ethiopian fœtus, I mentioned, is covered with light
brown straight hairs, which scarcely differ from the down of the
European embryo; so that it is probable that the tint of the
skin and the hair are changed sensibly at the same time. I
have already observed that the Ethiopians get paler in old age,
and that their hair also grows white; and it is a well-known
thing, that in other men, in proportion as their skin is brown,
so are the genitals covered with curly hair. We are also told
in his last work, by D. Antonius de Ulloa³⁾, that the Ethiopians
of Darien have hair, though black, still straight. Others too
have declared, and I myself have often observed, that the struc-
ture of the Ethiopian hair is the same as that of other men,
and the bulb of it as white.

Many authors tell us that the feet of the Ethiopians are
badly formed, in more than one way. The author of the
[Seite 125] Moretum (said to be Virgil) reckons up their many defects as
follows¹⁾:

And Hier. Mercurialis agrees with him, for he says that these
slits in the feet are endemic to the Ethiopians²⁾. Another
passage worthy of notice is to be found in Petronius³⁾, which, as
Heyne⁴⁾ tells us, refers to the Ethiopian slaves, like those we
call negroes. Cæl. Rhodiginus⁵⁾ says that the Egyptians and
Ethiopians have splay feet, &c, which, however, do not seem
to be by any means common to entire nations; for Albert
Durer⁶⁾, after speaking of these deformities in the feet of the
Ethiopians, adds that he has seen many well and symmetri-
cally formed; nor was I able to observe anything of this kind
in the Ethiopians I have seen myself.

That the breasts of the Ethiopian⁷⁾ and other⁸⁾ southern
women are pendulous and contracted, from their mode of life
and habits of lactation, wants scarcely any testimony adduced.
To those mutations of the human body which are occasioned
by the mode of life, we may also add those which owe their
origin to the difference of languages, and which are sometimes
to be found in the very organs of speech. To attribute this
difference, with J. Senebier⁹⁾, to the influence of beat or cold,
is forbidden by a slight comparison of neighbouring languages.
Who could possibly attribute to the climate the fact that the
Ephraimites said Sibolet instead of Schibolet; that the Chinese
cannot pronounce the letters R and D; or the Spaniards the final
M, or the inhabitants of the Marquesas and the Greenlanders
of Kamtschadale Tsch and ks. But the prodigious labours of
[Seite 126] Büttner on this point forbid me to be more prolix on the matter,
for he has collected with incredible labour all that relates to
the subject, and will very soon give it to the press.

I pass on to those things which, besides the shape of the
head, are apt to be changed by the aid of art in the other parts
of the body amongst various nations. And first of all I mean to
speak of mutilations, where members and parts of the body are
cut or torn out, &c. The Scriptures, and the stories of Hero-
dotus¹⁾ about the Colchians, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians,
and the wide extent of the practice²⁾, all prove that circumcision
is exceedingly ancient. Nor is it confined entirely to the
stronger sex, for amongst many oriental people it is applied to
the weaker sex, and that part of their pudenda which answers³⁾
to the prepuce of the virile member is cut off; of which cere-
mony copious testimony both from ancient and modern writers
has been collected by Mart. Schurigius⁴⁾ and Theod. Tronchin⁵⁾.
It will be enough for us at present to give our readers a draw-
ing (Pl. II. fig. 4) of the genitals of a circumcised girl of
eighteen years old, which I owe to the kindness of Niebuhr,
who has also allowed me to give it to the public. When that
famous company went to travel in Asia, one of the questions
proposed to them was about this circumcision of both sexes⁶⁾;
and this illustrious man⁷⁾, who was the sole survivor of the ex-
pedition, settled this, as well as almost all the others; so much
so as to bring back this drawing I am speaking of, which the
great artist, G. W. Baurenfeind, had taken from the life. In it
you can see the body itself of the clitoris, bare and deprived of
its prepuce, hanging from the upper commissure of the labia,
[Seite 127] under the pubis, which is abraded, and below it lie the orifices
of the urethra, and the vagina: if perchance some may think
these things are not particularly well done, they must excuse
the haste of the draughtsman¹⁾.

Eunuchs have not so much to do with the matter in hand, as
monorchides, one of whose testicles is extracted during infancy.
First, this custom prevails amongst the Hottentots, who gene-
rally in the eighth, and sometimes, if we can trust Kolben²⁾, in
the eighteenth year, are made monorchides. They suppose it
makes them run quicker; but travellers remark that at the
same time it affects their fertility³⁾. The Swiss peasants not
unfrequently undergo the like loss of a testicle, that being the
way in which the neighbours used to cure ruptures⁴⁾.

To mutilations I refer the custom of eradicating the hair in
different parts of the body practised by some nations. Thus
the Burats keep only the hair below the chin, and pluck out
the rest⁵⁾: the Turks destroy⁶⁾ by various unguents the hair in
every part of the body except on the head and the beard: the
Otaheitans eradicate⁷⁾ the hairs under the armpit; and almost
all the people of America extirpate the beard, which gave rise
to the old idea⁸⁾, that the Americans were naturally beardless.
But this story scarcely needs refutation. Lionel Wafer⁹⁾ ex-
pressly says about the inhabitants of Darien, that they would
have beards if they did not pluck them out: and there is still
a little beard in our picture of the male Esquimaux, though
the rest of his face is smooth¹⁰⁾. I say nothing of the artificial
sharpening of the teeth¹¹⁾ amongst others, and other mutilations
[Seite 128] of equally little importance. First of all, I refer to deformities
those enormous and pendulous ears, which from a very long
time have been so much in favour among many nations, so as
to give a foundation to the old story about the Scythian popu-
lations in Pontus, that they have such large ears that they can
cover their whole bodies with them¹⁾. We have certain in-
formation about the inhabitants of Malabar, of C. Comorin²⁾,
Benares, the Moluccas³⁾, and Mallicolo⁴⁾, that they use various
artifices to make their ears as large as possible, and truly mon-
strous. The picture of a man of the south in Corn. Le Brun
represents them as disfigured in a wonderful way⁵⁾. We are
told by some English travellers in southern countries how the
New Zealanders studiously prolong the prepuce of the penis⁶⁾.
The immense nails of the Chinese⁷⁾ are well known. The
custom of making women thin by a particular diet is very
ancient, and has prevailed amongst the most refined nations⁸⁾,
so politeness and respect forbid us to class it, with Linnæus⁹⁾
amongst deformities. Though the use of pigments and dif-
ferent kinds of paint does not change the shapes of the mem-
bers themselves, yet it is so constant in some nations, that
it would clearly be wrong to leave it untouched. Some merely
smear their skin with pigments, whilst others first of all prick
it with a needle, and then rub the colours in, which in this
way adhere most tenaciously. Both customs have prevailed
amongst the most remote and different nations. The Kana-
gystæ¹⁰⁾, the Californians¹¹⁾, the Turks¹²⁾, the inhabitants of the
island of Santa Croce¹³⁾, and Mallicolo, of New Holland¹⁴⁾, and
[Seite 129] Cape Verde¹⁾, paint themselves²⁾. We know that the Tungus³⁾,
the Tschuktschi⁴⁾, the Arabians⁵⁾, the Esquimaux⁶⁾, the New-Zea-
landers⁷⁾, the Otaheitans⁸⁾, and many nations over all America⁹⁾
draw designs in the skin with a needle, or what we call tattoo
themselves.

And this is pretty well all that I have to tell about the
variations of the human body and its members, whether oc-
casioned by climate, or mode of life, or diverse unions, or finally,
by artificial means. Any one will easily see that our discussion
has been about the varieties of whole nations, and that we have
nothing to do with those peculiarities which happen acciden-
tally to one or two individuals; and therefore I am quite justi-
fied in making no mention here of those unfortunate children,
who have been now and then found amongst wild beasts; and
all the more because everything which is known of those in-
stances has been diligently collected and dealt with in a regular
way by the industry of some famous men¹⁰⁾. Their more im-
portant, and more noble part, that is reason, remains unculti-
vated; but hard necessity has so perverted their human nature,
that I should be inclined to refer these anthropomorphous
creatures, who are so like beasts, to the homines monstrosi of
Linnæus.

The diseases to which the human body is subject would
appear to be much less to our purpose than even the wild state
of these children; and yet I am unwillingly compelled to in-
trude here upon pathology, because of the recent mistakes of
some famous men, who have not hesitated to consider the af-
flicted persons about whom I am going to speak, not only as a
peculiar species of the human race, but even as the same with
the apes. There is a disorder affecting both the skin and the
eyes at the same time¹⁾, which sometimes occurs amongst men
of the most different nations, and amongst some kinds of quad-
rupeds, and birds. As we saw above that the whiteness of
organized bodies was due to cold, so now we have to consider
another kind of diseased whiteness which does not depend upon
cold. It seems to be found in plants²⁾ also, but is more fre-
quently observed, and appears with stronger and more remark-
able symptoms in animals, whose skin and hair, or whose
feathers and quills, become of an unnaturally chalky, or milky
hair, and their eyes grey, or reddish. In some few genera this
singular condition seems to become a second nature, so that
they produce offspring like themselves, and the same colour is
preserved to all generations; in most however instances of this
sort seem scattered and anomalous; they spring from parents of
the usual colour, and very often have offspring like them again,
or at all events the case is confined within the limits of a few
families.

Of the first sort the best known examples are white rabbits,
which are called, not inaptly, by Nic. le Cat³⁾, the leucœthiops of
their kind. Their fur is always a constant snowy white, whilst
their eyes are rosy or red, but in other rabbits grey or black.
They are deficient in that black pigment which lines internally
[Seite 131] the eyes of all the mammalia, the birds, the amphibious animals,
many of the fishes, and even insects, and whose seat is to be
found in the cellular web which lines the choroidal membrane, and
the uvea, &c. That this blackness is of the greatest consequence
towards sound and good vision is proved, besides other ways, by
the weak eye-sight of those animals in whom, as in the white
rabbit, that pigment is entirely wanting, or even in some consider-
able proportion¹⁾. For even those animals in whom the tapetum
is blue or green are less able to bear a clear and noonday light,
in proportion as they have that part larger or more conspicuous;
as may be observed in the cat and other animals whose habits
are nocturnal. But yet in them the external side of the
choroid, and whatever internal part there is besides the tape-
turn, is covered with the usual blackness, of which however not
a vestige appears in the rabbits we are speaking of. Hence an
immense quantity of vessels, if they are turgid with blood, seem
to be transparent with a sort of rosy or auburn colour through
the pupil and in the iris; but this beautiful rosy hue perishes
if the bulb of the eye is taken away from the orbit and the
blood flows out; and it remains, if you first of all replenish the
same vessels with dull-red suet. The pupil is, as in all the
animals of which we shall speak, very large, even after death;
the iris, if cut off from the vessels, white, and barely fibrous;
which, if it is the case with the his of other animals, clearly
shows that the absence of circular fibres is connected with this
deficiency of extraneous pigment: its vessels are beautifully
curved; so also the folds of the ciliary processes, if the injection
has been properly performed, &c. As this defect of the eyes
is so common to this kind of rabbits, that their females, when
embraced by black or grey males, produce offspring with white
and red eyes, it is not to be wondered at if they become easily
accustomed to the light, and able to endure the glare of day.

The nature of white mice is otherwise compounded, for
although they preserve for many generations the snowy colour
of their fur, and the red colour of their eyes, so far, like rabbits,
[Seite 132] they still remain to an extreme degree avoiders of the light¹⁾.
There is here at Göttingen a bakehouse, in which white mice
are not unfrequently caught, many of which I have seen alive;
and, if a light was brought to the hole, they would instantly hide
themselves in the cotton which was put for them, but in the
twilight, or when the season was cloudy, they used to run freely
about.

Besides rabbits and mice there are other animals in which
this variety of hair and feathers and eyes is sometimes, though
rarely, to be seen. Amongst horses²⁾ such sometimes occur;
which however must not be confounded with the breed peculiar
to Denmark; for although these have white hair, yet their
hoofs and eyes are black, and, according to the observations
of Kersting, they have also the rete Malpighianum brown.

I myself have seen white dogs with red eyes; a hamster of
the same sort I owe to the liberality of Sulz; and such a
squirrel was kept living by J. J. Wagner³⁾.

Amongst birds, white varieties are known to occur in
Canary-birds, parrots and cocks, and very seldom, but occa-
sionally, in crows.

Finally, as to men who suffer from this defect, the accounts
of them have been by some recent authors so deformed, and so
mixed up with fables, that we may easily pardon those who
have allowed themselves to be deceived, and have not hesitated
to make out of them a particular species of mankind. It will
therefore be our business to separate the stories from the truth,
to show that the disease, so far from forming a species, does not
even form a peculiar variety of mankind; to narrate its
symptoms in detail; and to show that it was known to the
ancients, and has spread over almost all the world.

The other immense merits of Linnæus, and my own respect
for so great a man, forbid me to say much about his great
mistake, repeated in so many editions⁴⁾ of his magnificent work,
and which other learned men declare was put forth in all good
[Seite 133] faith, especially after the severe censures of Buffon¹⁾ and Pauw²⁾.
It will be sufficient to sum it up in a few words: that the
attributes of apes are there mixed up with those of men – for
a body less than ours by half, eyes deep in their orbit, joined
to the membrana nictitans, and a lateral vision at the same time
on both sides³⁾ , the fingers of the hand touching the knees when
in an erect position, the wrinkled skin of the pubis⁴⁾, and finally,
the whispering tongue and those arrogant conceits, the hope
of future dominion, &c. have nothing to do with the highest
work of the Supreme Being, but must be relegated to the
region of fable.

There is a disease of the human body, for the most part
congenital, exactly like that which I have shown to attack
certain animals; it is, however, different in this, that it plays
with the symptoms, and now attacks man lightly, and now
severely; in some countries it is rare, in others more frequent
and endemic; here it is propagated in families, there it seizes
people capriciously and individually. It affects the skin and
the eyes at the same time, and therefore seems referable either
to tetter or to luscitio⁵⁾ : that it is related to both, will be plain
from an enumeration of the symptoms. As to the skin, or
rather the cuticle, which is the principal seat of disease, in
this disease it is affected in more than one way; it is indeed
always of a diseased whiteness, and the hair⁶⁾ or groin are co-
loured in the same way; but the nature of the epiderm itself
undergoes all sorts of mutations, though it is not always entirely
[Seite 134] affected, but, in rare cases, the places are scattered over the
surface of the body. Those, however, who are ill in this way
must be carefully separated from those men who have the rete
parti-coloured, and of whom I have spoken above¹⁾. In the
disease of which I am now speaking, it has been observed in
the East Indies, by Rudolph²⁾, that the spots are rough and can
be distinguished by the touch from the rest of the skin.
Strahlenberg³⁾ and John Bell⁴⁾ report that parti-coloured persons
of this kind are found amongst the Tartars; and the accounts
of Hall⁵⁾ describe the Malabars as marked by large spots of
the same kind, of a yellowish white, and make the disorder
something like leprosy. Closely allied to this sort of disease is
that in which the skin of the body becomes white, with spots of
another colour, as yellow⁶⁾, scattered over it⁷⁾, or where the colour
is a mixture of red and white⁸⁾, or where the face at least
retains its natural redness⁹⁾.

In most cases however, the whole skin, though not in the
same way, becomes white. For in many, little or nothing at
all in the epidermis is changed, except the colour, so that in
other respects there is no symptom of any disease at all. Such
are many of the inhabitants of the isthmus of Darien, most
carefully described by Lionel Wafer¹⁰⁾, who are said to be covered
with a copious, though thin and snowy down. Like this also
was a beautiful woman from the neighbouring island of Ternata,
whom Le Brun¹¹⁾ says was a concubine of the king of Bantam;
and also a boy of five years old, shown to the Academy of Paris¹²⁾.
The English poet¹³⁾ speaks of another, lately shown in London,
[Seite 135] with a skin like that of an European. In many, however, the
epidermis too is scabby. I read the same about a Tamul
schoolmaster, whose skin as it were came off in scales, and be-
came almost of a red colour¹⁾. The disease is called the white
leprosy, in Malabar Wonkuschtam or Wenkuschtam²⁾. Allied to
this also is the crusted leprosy of some inhabitants of Paraguay,
recalling the scales of fish, painless, and in no ways affecting
the general health³⁾. The white Ethiopians too are made
lepers by Ludolph⁴⁾, and so are the inhabitants of Guinea by
Isaac Voss⁵⁾. I myself have been acquainted for many years
with a Saxon youth, whose whole skin, not excepting even his
face and the palms of the hands, was rough with white, and
as it were calcareous scales, which appeared red through the
numerous interstices, and as it were fissures, of the crust.
Sometimes these scales peeled off, and then the limbs looked
redder; but new ones instantly grew up. The groin was white;
the hair and the eye-brows, if I recollect right, of a mouse
colour. For those hairs do not, like that on the groin, keep
the same colour in this disease, but vary in the most capricious
way. Most have white⁶⁾, soft hair, exactly like goats' wool⁷⁾.
Nor in these is the colour constant, but as they grow older
is often changed into rosy⁸⁾. Voss⁹⁾ attributes red and yellow
hair to his Leucœthiopians: the hair was yellow in the Malabar
family¹⁰⁾, golden in the Manilla girl of G. Jos. Camelli¹¹⁾.

So much about one phase of our disorder, which occurs
with tetter: the other phase, as I have said, affects the eyes,
and belongs to luscitio, yet it is wonderful how the symptoms
of it differ. In many the eyelids become turgid, winking¹²⁾; the
[Seite 136] eyes of the inhabitants of Darien open in a crescent shape¹⁾;
all blink during the day, which is also sometimes the case with
people in good health, and even with the fœtus, according to
the observation of Wrisperg²⁾, when the light is too strong. It
was also observed in that youth whose epidermis I lately de-
scribed, that this inconvenience was with him at its height during
winter, when he could not endure the brightness of the snow,
so that he stood in fear even of ice. In some the iris is in
perpetual motion, and the pupils so unquiet that they can
never distinguish minute objects, as letters³⁾. The colours of
the iris and choroid are various, but all rather pale, so that
less light is absorbed, and the retina all the more affected.

In some the eyes are rosy, as in the animals we mentioned.
I have myself known such, two sons and the daughter of a
French peasant⁴⁾. Maupertuis and Voltaire differ in their de-
scription of the eyes of 1744 Leucœthiopians who were seen at
Paris; for one calls them rosy, the other sky-coloured. They
may however be reconciled if we follow Fontenelle⁵⁾, who says
that the iris, &c. appears red in a certain position of the eyes only.
The man that Goldsmith saw had red eyes. Sky-coloured eyes
are not however uncommon in this disease. For as this colour
always denotes weak vision, according to Avicenna and Averroes,
as quoted by Hermann Conring⁶⁾, so especially it often occurs
in our nuctalopes. The young man I knew had sky-coloured
eyes. And those Malabars who suffer from white leprosy com-
bined with luscitio, have eyes of a similar colour⁷⁾; and so also
those who are said to exist in the kingdom of Loango⁸⁾. Dap-
per says they have grey eyes. I am not quite sure whether
this is the disease under which the family of Jerome Cardan
[Seite 137] laboured. For he says, in his own life¹⁾, ‘“my father was red,
and had white eyes, and saw by night;”’ and again, ‘“my eldest
son had eyes exactly like him;”’ and again, about the same
child²⁾, ‘“like my father, with small, white eyes, which were
never at rest;”’ and elsewhere about himself³⁾: ‘“In my early
youth, immediately I awoke, though in extreme darkness, I
saw everything exactly as if it had been bright day-light: but
in a short time I lost this power. Even now I can see a little,
but not so as to discern anything.”’

Let so much suffice about external condition of the skin
and eyes in those suffering under this disorder. There is still
a little to be said about the rest of the constitution of their
body. In the first place, it does not follow that they all are
either foul or dirty. We are told that many of them belong to
the court of the king of Loango⁴⁾. Certainly another was the
mistress of the king of Bantam⁵⁾, and such a woman of Malabar⁶⁾
married an European soldier. She is described as of square body
and round cheeks. And they seem at all events strong enough
to do their business by night. In fact, it is said that they make
hostile incursions into the neighbouring countries by night⁷⁾, and
that the Portuguese have carried off others from Guinea to
Brazil, to make them work in the gold mines: this certainly
would be a kind of life in which nuctalopia, would be of some use.

Others seem to be of weak and feeble constitution. So
Wafer speaks of the inhabitants of Darien⁸⁾. The French of the
parish of Champniers can scarcely stand being in the open air.
The Malabars certainly cannot endure long journeys⁹⁾, and are
speedily fatigued¹⁰⁾ with the wind and the heat¹¹⁾. The brightness
of the sun makes their eyes water¹²⁾, but they see pretty well in
cloudy weather¹³⁾.

Examples prove that the mind and the intellectual faculties
are in no respect affected by this disorder, but may remain
perfectly sound. The young man I have so often spoken of,
was well instructed in more than one of what they call the
polite sciences. I have mentioned the schoolmaster of Malabar,
who was clever at writing poetry. And if you like, you may
consider Cardan a great luminary of art.

These then are the phenomena and symptoms of the dis-
ease. It still remains to be proved that it attacks nations at
all times and in all places, and that it partly belongs to the
endemic, and partly to the sporadic diseases. In both ways it
was long since known to the ancients. A sporadic instance of
it gave a handle to the Roman story which, under the title of
Ethiopics, has been handed down to us by Heliodorus. King
Hydaspes, it appears, hesitates to acknowledge his daughter
Charicles as his own, when she suddenly laid claim to him, be-
cause he and his wife were Ethiopians, whilst her skin was
white. But Sisimithres, the advocate of Charicles, who had
brought her up from infancy, explains the whole matter to the
father: ‘“she too was white,”’ says he, ‘“whom I brought up;
besides, the lapse of time agrees with the present age of the
girl, since she is seventeen years old, which is just the time
the child was exposed. Moreover, the appearance of the eyes
bears me out; and I recognize that the whole aspect of the
countenance, and the beautiful figure which I now see, agrees
with that which I then saw¹⁾.”’ Perhaps also the story of the
female child Aristotle²⁾ speaks of may be thus explained,
which was born of the adulterous connexion of a Sicilian woman
with an Æthiop, and did not have the colour of her father,
but in process of time gave birth to a son, who was entirely
black, like his grandfather. The ancients knew this disorder
also as endemic, so that they gave names to whole nations and
regions in consequence. It seems probable that Albania, on
the confines of the Caucasian mountains and Armenia³⁾, had
[Seite 139] its name from this, about which Isigonus of Nice¹⁾ speaks thus:
‘“Some are born there with grey eyes, white from early child-
hood, who see better by night than by day’²⁾. Another nation
of this kind acquired the name of Leucœthiopes, hence trans-
ferred to all who suffer from this disease. They are mentioned
by Pomponius Mela³⁾, Pliny⁴⁾, Ptolemy⁵⁾, and Agathemerus⁶⁾, but
are not noticed by Strabo, Julius Honorius⁷⁾, Ister Æthicus⁸⁾,
the anonymous writer of Ravenna, &c. They do not however
agree as to the country which the Leucœthiopes are said to
inhabit. Mela and Pliny place them with the Libyco-Egyptians,
near the Libyan sea. Joh. Reinhold, in the plates to his edition
of Mela, about long. 50° N. lat. 15°⁹⁾. But Ptolemy says the
Leucœthiopes live under Mount Ryssa, which, according to
D'Anville, is the name for Cape Verde. However that may be,
it is enough for our purpose, that this disease was not unknown
to the ancients.

We have seen that there are modern instances in the most
different and widely separated parts of the earth; and it will
be worth our while to add a few more, and in a few words
to reckon them up in the order of our four varieties. I have
carefully described a youth of our own Germany. Edm. Chap-
man relates that instances have been known in Spain and
France. Nic. Le Cat saw some children born at Ratisbon.
I have already noticed the case of those in the parish of Champ-
niers, and what Cardan says of his Italian family. G. Agricola
and Olaus Magnus found men of this kind in Scandinavia.
The accounts from Tranquebar tell us of many Malabars. They
are contemptuously called there kakerlacken¹⁰⁾, from their resem-
blance to the eastern moth, which is a parti-coloured and noc-
turnal insect. And this disorder occurs in Labrador, if indeed
[Seite 140] the Champagne girl, Le Blanc, belonged to the Esquimaux, as
is most likely¹⁾.

Leucœthiopians (if we may apply the old term to them
also) of the second variety of mankind have been known in
the islands of Java²⁾, Borneo³⁾, Manila⁴⁾, and others near
Ternata, and in New Guinea⁵⁾ and Otaheite⁶⁾. Of the third
variety, are found instances to the south beyond the foun-
tains of the Nile⁷⁾, and towards the river Senegal⁸⁾, whose
mouth lies under the Ryssadian promontory, and still further
south in Guinea⁹⁾, and its kingdom of Loango, and, finally, in the
interior of Kaffraria¹⁰⁾ and the island of Madagascar¹¹⁾. The fourth
variety can produce its Blafards on the isthmus of Darien, in
the kingdom of Mexico¹²⁾, in Tucuman, and Paraguay.

But our digression from the subject of natural history and
the varieties of mankind to pathology and diseases has been
already too long. Those must bear the blame who have con-
founded men suffering under disease with the beasts, which the
dignity of mankind demanded should be separated, and each
referred to their own place.

It would be an immense and irrelevant labour, if I were
to give an account of all the disorders which, according to the
authors of medical observations, journals, &c., have occurred
in the human body, in every quarter, contrary to nature. The
transition from hence to monsters would be easy, and so on to
general nosology; and thus the divine study of natural history
would run up into a confused and formless mass. Let us leave
therefore unnoticed, for physiologists and pathologists, the black
and horny epidermis of the Italian boy¹³⁾, or the Englishman¹⁴⁾,
and others, and similar peculiar aberrations from the natural
condition. Nor have we anything to do with the dire disorder
[Seite 141] of cretinism, which is by no means peculiar to the inhabitants
of the Vallais, but has been noticed elsewhere¹⁾, though dis-
torted here and there by wonderful stories²⁾.

It seems almost too much even to name in this place the
centaurs, sirens, cynocephali, satyrs, pigmies³⁾, giants, herma-
phrodites, and other idle creatures of that kind. Still, I con-
sider it necessary to spend a little time upon the men with
tails, since they have fallen in with some modern patrons.
There is an old story about the islands of the Satyrs in Pliny⁴⁾,
Ptolemy⁵⁾, and Pausanias⁶⁾, and often repeated afterwards by
Marco Polo, Munster and others, that men exist there with
shaggy tails, like the pictures of the satyrs, who are of incre-
dible swiftness, &c. When the passages in these writers have
been compared, it seems most likely that these islands of the
Satyrs answer to our Borneo, Celebes⁷⁾, &c., and that the tailed
apes have been taken for men. But a new story about men
with tails to be found here and there has made much more
to do. For partly, it is said, that men having tails are found
about the city of Turkestan⁸⁾, in the island of Formosa⁹⁾, Borneo¹⁰⁾,
Nicobar¹¹⁾, &c.; partly the very pictures of tailed men of this kind
have been exhibited¹²⁾. But upon a full consideration of the
matter, there is much which loads to the belief that the whole
story is founded upon the fictions I have spoken of. For, as to
the accounts about them, many of them manifestly depend upon
the narrations of others; and they who say they have themselves
seen tailed men of this kind bear no very good reputation.

The figure I have alluded to is of considerable antiquity,
and having been altered in the progress of time, first by one
and then by another, has by slow degrees become more and
more like the human figure. Martini took his figure from the
Amœnitates of Linnæus, who took it from Aldrovandus, and
he from Gesner, and, finally, this Swiss polyhistor says that he
took his from some description of the Holy Land¹⁾. Although he
does not name the author of the description, yet I could easily
see that it was Bernhard Von Breydenbach, and I have thought
it worth while to have the genuine figure reproduced from the
very rare first edition²⁾ of his work (Tab. II. fig. 5), which has
passed with recent authors for a man with a tail. For on the
reverse of the geographical chart on which Palestine is set out
he has delineated the figures of six animals with the epigraph;
‘“These animals are faithfully represented as we saw them in the
Holy Land”’ The figure which I have repeated is the last of
all, as he adds, ‘“of some nameless animal,”’ but I think I should
readily conclude it was of some tailed ape, a Callitrichus, for
example (silenus, L.). Certainly the wide separation of the
great toe from the others, &c. show it to be a true ape. This in
progress of time, and through the carelessness of artists, has
been at last transmuted into a figure sufficiently like that
of a man, with human feet, &c. The very extraordinary in-
stances of a prolonged coccygis, or of an appendage with a tail,
in Trimethius³⁾, Bauhin⁴⁾, Blanchard⁵⁾, König⁶⁾, and Elsholz⁷⁾,
relate to monstrous productions, and are out of place here. It
is well known to anatomists that variation often occurs in the
os sacrum⁸⁾ and the number of the coccygeal vertebræ⁹⁾.

As to the cutaneous ventrale which has been asserted by
old travellers to belong to the Hottentot women, the most
recent testimonies¹⁾ compel us to class it with the men's tails,
and to consider it, like them, a fable.