CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER IV.

ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES.

We have endeavoured to prove in the preceding pages the specific unity of the biological phenomena in each Order, which are to be found among the superior animals and man. This unity has led us necessarily to another, that ofmethod; and we have just seen that man forms simply a family, that is to say, a very secondary division in the zoological series.

But we have only taken the first step of the path in which we have to travel. The genushomoshows many varieties, and many dissimilarities. We must try to estimate their value, and to find out what the divisions to be established between what we commonly callracesof men may be worth. Now, the only rule to be followed here is naturally that which is applied by all zoologists to the other individuals composing the animal series. The only way to arrive at such a goal will be, first of all, the study of the physical differences, the necessary basis of a rational classification. Thus we shall, at least, have important, and what is more, comparable results.

The anatomy of races has been largely written about, and yet we may even now offer this subject to the serious study of anthropologists; perhaps, also, in carrying their attention farther than the skin, the encephalic mass and the skeleton, which have been nearly the sole objects of study up to the present time, they will find in all systems dissimilarities of the same order, and as clearly defined.108These differences andvarieties are such that they are obvious, and at once appreciated even by ignorant persons,109—they are such that the most eminent monogenists agree in regarding them as everywhere sufficient to make a difference in species, or even in genus itself.

They refer to every point of organisation, and we shall see farther on that they are found to be as decided and as palpable both in the mind and in the natural constitution. We do not pretend to speak of all of them in this place, not even to enumerate them; we shall merely quote the principal points, or those which appear to deserve some special remark. The number of those which exist, or which are believed to exist,—for this is a necessary restriction,—is immense; in fact, if we are the first to admit that there is an infinite variety of differences, considerable in themselves, between the various kinds of men, we also wish to avoid falling into the errors which are so often committed, and which happen from the small number of facts which have been observed, the investigators having often given the value of general facts to individual observation.

We find more than one example of these hasty opinions in the history of anthropological studies. Towards the end of the last century, when the colour of the Negro had already been for a hundred years the dominant study of the scientific world of Europe,110a certain Kluegel affirmed (in theEncyclopédie de Berlin, 1782) that the lips of the Ethiopian were of a fine red colour. A great commotion arose; Sömmering himself was roused; he wrote everywhere, sought for information,and demanded fresh intelligence, which, quite naturally, was found to be contrary to the opinion expressed by Kluegel. In fact, we know that in the Negro the colouring matter extends to most of the mucous membranes whose structure resembles that of the skin.

The lips are generally black, and we usually find upon the gums, and even upon the palate, a non-continuous coloured membrane, which forms spots of a deep violet colour. Kluegel had concluded too hastily from some particular fact; he had in his mind, very probably, some Negro with lips, gums, and tongue of a fine rose colour, contrasting as much as possible with the black of his skin. We have had occasion ourselves to observe a similar case as regards a native of Soudan, who was also affected with a sort of partial albinoism of the buccal mucous membrane.

In anthropology, as in all science requiring observation, it is the averages which ought to be admitted as evidence; they alone have an absolute value, and can alone lead to positive results. Every isolated phenomenon has its individual value as regards its simple truth, but we are exposed to the greatest errors when we begin to generalise from it.

The osseous system has been most studied.111In the osseous system, the head, and particularly the skull. We shall be obliged, later on, to refer to the value of cranioscopic proceedings, and the classifications resting on this base.

The face, as well as the skull, has been the object of attentive inquiry; the smallest differences have been noticed, and almost all have been formed by some one or other into distinct characteristics. We may quote here Bérard’s classification, as resumed and developed by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. He divided the genushomointo four groups:—

1. Theorthognathi, or men with a flat face and oval countenance.

2. Theeurygnathi, or men with a large face and projecting cheek bones.

3. Theprognathi, or men with a protuberant countenance.

4. Lastly, these races, which are botheurygnathiandprognathi, like the Hottentots, the development of whose face offers an example of a manifest step towards the exaggeration of this same development in the anthropomorphous ape in infancy.112

It has been endeavoured to establish, by means of averages, an appreciable difference between the pelvis of various races. Weber has considered that the form of the superior division is not the same with all of them. According to him it would be—

1.Oval, among Europeans.2.Round, among Americans.3.Square, among the Mongols.4.Cuneiformoroblong, among the Africans.

The same ideas have been resumed and defended by French anthropologists;113it is right, however, to remark, that Weber himself adds that varieties of every description of pelvis may be met with among the same race. That which appears certain is the fact, that in the Negro race the pelvis is, in general, sensibly smaller. This is, at least, the opinion of Camper,114Vrolik, Sömmering, White,115and Bérard,116who have measured a great number of them.

The facility in parturition, so remarkable among the inferior races, has therefore, as a cause, a relative smallness in the head of the fœtus, even more remarkable. For we must admit that, among these people, everything happens naturally, as among animals; it is the laborious childbirth among ourselves which is exceptional and anomalous, and which requires to be explained. This difficult and painful parturition, which we so continually see, is, doubtless, the consequence of civilisation;only it is difficult to decide what may be its immediate cause, and if this cause resides in the mother or in the fœtus. Is it the pelvis which has been made narrower in the European by some custom in our manners—by some habit of education? or must we admit—and it is a serious question—that the development of such an organ as the brainin the fœtus, is subordinate to the exercise of the functions of the same organ in the progenitors?

With the osseous system we may connect the differences of height which are so apparent. Who does not recognise that in Europe, for instance, the Anglo-Saxons, the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Albanians, are of great stature; whilst the inhabitants of the south of France, the Irish, the Spaniards,117and the Maltese, represent a shorter variety of the human race. The members show the most marked differences among the various races of mankind, by reason of the law which causes the modifications of organism to become more and more decided, and more and more clear from the centre to the periphery. Naturalists seek for characteristics of families and individuals in the fingers and in the teeth: it is in the extremes of an individual, in the colour of the hair or the skin, that we generally find the characteristics of species. We shall only quote in this place facts which may be the object of some particular remark.

It has been said continually that the Tartars have bowed legs, and monogenists have not failed to discover from this fact a new proof of the influences of their mode of life, so necessary in order to maintain their thesis. They discovered at first sight, in thisgeneralinfirmity, a consequence of the habit of riding on horseback, without considering that the Arabs rode on horseback quite as often, and that, nevertheless, their noble bearing and straightness of limb did not suffer from it in the slightest. In tracing the source of this error, we perceive that it is a singular exaggeration of the facts statedby Pallas, who lived for so long a time amongst the Tartars. He simply says, “The sole fault in conformation which israther frequentamong them, is a bend in the arms and legs, resulting from a kind of spoon, or saddle, upon which they are always placed in their cradle, as if they were on horseback, and therefore, as soon as they learn to walk, they are obliged at every movement to accustom themselves to the position of riding.”118This is what Pallas says; but it is very clear that he is here speaking merely of exceptional cases, for he says higher up, “I do not remember to have ever seen a child who was a cripple. Their education, which is entirely left to nature, can only form bodies which are healthy andwithout a blemish.”119If occasionally the accounts of travellers have been exaggerated, it is not less the rule, that certain races show a conformation of the extremities very different to what it is among ourselves. Albrecht Durer has already made this remark. In the Negro, for instance, the length of the forearm is much greater than in the European. It is proportional to the height in these two races :: 107 : 100.120

The thumb of the Negro’s hand is also generally much less opposed to the other fingers. In certain races of mankind, the hand itself is of an extraordinary small size. This is the case among the Bosjesmans, the Chinese, the Esquimaux,121and the Cingalese.122It was the same among the races who built the grand American temples, where we find upon the stones the imprint in red of their hands.123The same thing has been said about the ancient population of northern Europe, who were ignorant of the use of iron, and only used weapons made of bronze.124But the study of the magnificent collection ofScandinavian antiquities in the Berlin Museum, has not proved to ourselves that the hilts ofallthese arms were as small as has been pretended.

The foot varies not less. The Negro races of the Oceanic Islands, and of Africa, appear to show an exaggerated development of the heel-bone. MM. Quoy and Gaimard have especially remarked it among the inhabitants of Vanikoro. In fact, there is hardly anybody who will forget, when once he has seen it, the special aspect of the instep in the Negro, ridged with numerous folds commencing from beneath the ankle. This is, besides, a particular mark, which is far from showing itself, as may be well believed, amongallpeople who walk without foot-covering. The foot of the Nubians, and especially that of the females, shows quite different characteristics. The five metatarsi seem to rest their whole length upon the ground, without being shaped by the instep; their anterior extremities are slightly diverted, the toes having the same spaces between them, so that the foot is flat, but otherwise than by the faulty conformation to which we give this name among ourselves. This structure is, besides, perfectly represented in all Egyptian statues without exception, and more sensibly, indeed, if we compare with those which are in the galleries of the British Museum, a fragment of a colossal foot,125found also in Egypt, at Alexandria, but evidently of Greek or Roman origin; the toes are close together, the great toe alone being separated, the upper part of the foot being arched, as among Europeans.

This resemblance between all the Egyptian statues and the foot of the inhabitants of Upper Egypt, or Nubia, cannot be an accidental circumstance. It is, besides, a veritable problem in anthropology, to determine its value in accordance with the monumental iconography of the ancient Egyptians. M. A. Maury has determined with precision the authority of the portraits—almost all alike—which cover the walls of thetemples. We ourselves, when visiting the famous cavern of Abou-Simbel, were far from finding all that the writings of certain anthropologists and partisans of Egyptian art, such as Gliddon, Nott, etc., had promised us. Doubtless, one can perfectly distinguish certain types,126that is indisputable;127but to desire to find apeoplein each portrait,—Scythians, Arabs, Philistines, Lydians, Kurds, Hindoos, Jews, Chinese, Tyrians, Pelasgians, Ionians, etc.,—is it not to give too great an influence to the Egyptian artists, who were copyists without skill, and but clumsy inventors? Egyptian art, whatever may have been said of it, has always been very much farther from being a copy of nature than Grecian art; the one tended to the ideal, the other tended to transform it. Certain trees which we see thrown down in the bas-relief of the great temple of Karnak, are assuredly pure imagination. It may have been the same with many other subjects to which a scientific value has been given.

Let us return to anatomical differences, and to that which has, since antiquity, most vividly struck the masses, as well as serious investigators. We are going to speak about those colours in the skin of man which run through almost the whole of the chromatic scale, from dead white to the deepest brown.128There is no system which has not been thought of in order to explain these differences, even up to the influence of Noah’s curse.129

Unfortunately, we are wanting in those histological and chemical researches which are necessary in order to form the bases of a complete history of the colours of the skin in the human race.130We can merely say, that the recent works upon certain morbid states, such as Addison’s disease, and otherswhich may approach it, by making us acquainted with the pathological circumstances under which the European with a white skin becomes almost as black as a Negro, and by identical anatomical modifications, have nearly proved that atmospheric phenomena have not the influence which monogenists give to them, and that the first origin of the colour of the epidermis in the human race resides rather in the depths of the organism, inaccessible to celestial radiation.131

The varieties which the pilous system presents is the chief point, and equal at least in importance to those of the cutaneous system. If we think that a classification of races, based simply upon the characteristics of the hair, as has been proposed,132would leave much to be desired, and would be far too artificial, we do not doubt, however, but that the pilous system can furnish indications of great value when they have been combined in a wise manner with other characteristics, as Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has done.133Doubtless, the colours of the hair, from flaxen to black, and from brown to red, are innumerable in France, and as generally so in countries where the mixture of races has been carried as far as possible; but it must be remembered that among a purer population, less mixed with foreign blood, the constancy of characteristics taken from the hair is remarkably great.134Besides, the differences which present themselves do not relate merely to colour; the hair of a race of men may be either smooth, or woolly, or crisped, for in general these two latter terms are wrongly and indifferently used, when they ought really to point out two particular and distinct states. It is thus that the inhabitants of Lower Nubia, for instance, who have a very deep shade of colour, possess curled hair, trulywoolly, and quite different to that of the Negro, whose hair is reallycrisped.135Other characteristicsmay be demanded from the length of the hair, from its transverse section,—the figure of which may vary considerably,—from its flexibility or its quantity; in fact, even from its manner of being placed in the head, the arrangement of which upon the scalp has never been properly studied, and which may, perhaps, vary with the different races of mankind. In fact, human hairs, like that of many mammalia, are not placed at equal distances the one from the other; they approach each other in little groups. This is especially seen in the nape of the neck, and among the Negro race much more so than among the Europeans.

This fact, joined to the irregularly prismatic form of the hair in the Negro, is doubtless the origin of the following peculiarity: when the head of a Negro has been shaved, and the hair begins to grow afresh, one is especially struck with its strange appearance. It is arranged in little tufts about the size of a pea, so that the head, it has been remarked,136resembles nothing more closely than an old worn-out brush.

This peculiarity is special to the Negro, and is not found in the north-east of Africa, where the neighbouring population havewoollyhair. Among the enumeration of the numberless perfections which a dogmatic Hindú requires from Buddha, and which Çakhya-Mouni possessed, it is said, “The hair of Buddha shoots forth in little ringlets.”137It is impossible to describe better what happens with the Negro. All this Hindoo tradition is, besides, a veritable enigma for the anthropologist. Why is Buddha depicted with the palms of the hands descending to the knees?138Why is the mendicant son of a king, born on the banks of the Ganges, always represented with the features or characteristics of a Negro, with black skin, and crisped hair? Nevertheless, Çakhya-Mouni did not belong to these inferior varieties of the human race, of whose existence in the Indian Peninsula we have already spoken; in that case, he would have been unfit to formulate any doctrine, either moral or philosophic.

The rest of the pilous system, not less than that of the hair, merits the attention of the anthropologist. Thus, a very especial fact, and to which, in our opinion, sufficient importance has never been attached, is, on the one hand, the relative abundance of the beard among the various races of mankind; and on the other, the time of its development. The Chinese, for example, is for a long time beardless, and it is only about his fortieth year that a few stiff hairs begin to appear upon his face.

Among the Negroes, the Americans, and the Polar race, the hair is, in the same way, very slightly developed on the face. “The length of our beards (of thirty days growth), which had not been shaved since we left theVictory,” said Sir John Ross,139“was, among other things, a source of great amusement, while one of them, a stranger, whose beard was of unusual length among this tribe, claimed consanguinity with us on that ground.” The thick and close beard seems, in regarding the matter closely, the exclusive appanage of that race which, sprung from the Imaüs, spread over the whole of Europe, and whose finest representatives still inhabit the table-lands of Iran.140Our neighbours, the Semites, are far from being so well provided; and Lieut.-Colonel H. Smith has141not, perhaps, done wrong in proposing to make an abundant pilous system the characteristic of one race, just as the crisped state of the hair would become the characteristic of another.

The systems of animal life, doubtless, show as many varieties among different races of men as the systems of the life of relationship; only these varieties are much less known. It will be sufficient for us to remember in this place the darker colour of the blood and thespermaamong the Negro race, as already remarked by Aristotle and verified by Jacquinot, and the equally dark tint of the nervous centres; so that the whole Å“conomy of the Negro is, even in the most hidden parts (and those most distant from solar or atmospheric influence), impregnated with colouring matter.

Let us notice, also, the development of the smalllabiaamong the Hottentot women, that of theprepuceand theclitorisamong the Semitic race, and even the size of thepenisamong the Ethiopians—such a size that it would almost impede the union of a black man with a white woman, whilst the union of a white man with a Negress would occur without any impediment. This remark, quite in agreement with the theories of M. d’Eichthal, has been made by a monogenist;142we have merely the right to wonder at it. How can we reconcile this impossibility, were it even a shade of a real one, with the notion of indefinite and universal reproduction, which all monogenists—wrongly, as we shall see—make one of their strongest arguments in favour of the specific unity of man?

II. What we call physiological differences are certain functional forms of the same organ, particular to certain races. This is, as may be seen, an entirely artificial distinction, since these differences must necessarily and forcibly refer to material, that is, to anatomical differences.

These alone, either from their small value, or from some other cause, have been hitherto unknown; whilst their effects, being more sensible, have not failed to escape our observation. If an Esquimaux, for instance, eats in one day the food of six English sailors,143it is evident that the intestines, the stomach, and the glands which border on them, present special modifications with reference to this kind of nourishment, so different from the frugivorous diet for which man’s organism is adapted. When a Tartar sees further than a European who is using a telescope,144it is certain that such a functional superiority depends only on the material quality of the organ,—from a more perfect arrangement of the visual apparatus,—from the more perfect nature of the medium refractive powers of the eye.

It has often been desired to refer these kind of modifications to the education of the race or the individual. The education of the race by itself, independently of the ordinary course,seems to us difficult to admit, since education, in this case, would suppose a triumphant struggle against the ordinary course of things. Every animal comes into the world as its parents came, or, at least, apparently so. If he brings with him, by inheritance, certain particular characteristics, they must necessarily in time become obliterated either by their own means, or by destroying all those who possess them (the case of hereditary degeneracy). In fact, if perfection in a race were possible by means of an individual, the consequence would be that very soon our descendants would be no longer in relationship with the circumambient medium, which would be an absurdity.145

As to individual education, it has an undeniable influence; but this does not suffice to explain such important differences. We never find that Europeans, who happen to be thrown among savages, attain to these peculiarly fine and delicate perceptions so special to many aborigines. And, moreover, the American residing in boundless forests, where the view is always restricted, has as piercing a glance as the Kalmuc upon his plain. The question of the education of an organ or a system by the individual himself will be cleared up, doubtless, one of these days, by attentive anatomy. And since we are upon the subject, let us remember that an important study still remains, hitherto merely glanced at,—that of the influence which, for instance, the milk of an animal or a female of another race may have upon the development or the health of a white child.

The differences which we call physiological are very numerous; we shall, however, only quote two or three from among the most striking. The principal point, perhaps, is the peculiar smell of the Negro. This is so strong, that it even impregnates for some time a place where a Negro may only have remained for a few hours, and it is so characteristic, that it alone constitutes a grave presumption in matters of slave-trading; for Humboldt has stated concerning the Peruvianswhat Le Cat and Haller said about the savages of the Antilles, that they could perfectly trace a Negro by scent, thanks to this odour; and it is, at the same time, a new proof of the sensitive perfection of the American race. This odour is quite independent of age, and sometimes is almost insupportable in young children; it is also independent of sweat, and, in fact, of all the means of cleanliness of which a Negro can make use.146It is due, according to all appearance, to a secretion from the same glands which, in the white man, give such a peculiar odour to the arm-pits; but this latter is absolutely different from that of the Negro.147With regard to this, we must not lose the occasion of noticing one of those contradictions into which monogenists have so often fallen, and, indeed, it could not be otherwise. “The dog does not come from the jackal,” says M. Flourens,148“for the jackal has such a peculiar smell, that it does not seem possible that, in this case, the dog should not have preserved some traces of it at least.” Shall we reason in the same manner in order to make a special race of the Negro, and would this monogenist accept it?

Another very remarkable physiological peculiarity, and one quite as worthy of being noticed, since it has a certain effect upon physiognomy, upon thefaciesof a race, is a special mode of standing, consisting in holding oneself in a squatting position, the sole of the foot on the ground, and the thighs bent up against the hams, without theischiatouching the ground. This effect is what Cook called “a monkey countenance.”149

We find nowhere that the Greeks,—the inhabitants of the ancient continent generally,—the Arabs, or even the ancient Egyptians themselves, have ever been accustomed to this position, which necessarily implies some anatomical modification, whether it be in the separation of the pelvis, the direction of the neck of the thigh-bone, or the torsion of the bones, etc.150This position seems, on the contrary, to have been always the peculiarity of the Melanesian races; it is the ordinary mode ofstandingamong the inhabitants in the upper course of the Nile, and the Negroes of Africa and the Oceanic Islands. They place themselves thus in order to look at anything, to chat together, or to deliberate. The magnificent drawings which illustrate the account of the travels of the English Embassy to the Emperor of Abyssinia,151represent this monarch as reviewing an entire army of infantry drawn up in order of battle, and all squatting in this manner.

The ancient Egyptians generally kept themselves either on their knees or seated on the ground, the legs brought together, and the knees touching in front of the chest, as thousands of statues, figures, and pictures show us. But their artists have just revealed to us that the people of Central Africa have always been as they are at the present day. The great painting of Beït-Oually, in Nubia,152represents Rameses the Great as charging a troop of Negroes from Soudan; on one side, farther off, we see a Negro near a saucepan, preparing, doubtless, some food; he is squatting in the manner of which we have just spoken. In this place, as is often the case, the Egyptian artist has been clever in seizing a profile by its most significant characteristic.153

Géricault wished at one time to make a drawing of an episode in the “Shipwreck of the Medusa,” Coréard makingsigns to an African chief who was seated on the sand; he placed in his composition a Negro squatting, but he drew him with one foot resting entirely on the ground, and the other bearing only on the extremity of the metatarsi. At that time Géricault had only a white man as a model; a Negro would have placed himself differently, with both his feet flat on the ground.

We might pursue the history of these physiological varietiesad infinitum,—it is a large field for the enquirer; and to mention one fact alone, the compared history of development among the different races of mankind has still to be accomplished, especially the history of the intra-uterine development of the Negro, and even partly the history of the first months of his aërial life.

III. If organism, operating normally among different races, presents such varieties, why can we not suppose that it would hence show correlative differences in its morbid changes? should there not be, also, an ethnic pathology? This contains a large question, and yet it was scarcely thought of a few years ago. It seems to have been first proposed and studied by F. Schnurrer in his treatise onGeographical Pathology,154in 1813, in which the author seems to have perceived imperfectly, in all its vastness, the matter which now occupies our attention. The book is divided into three parts; the first is entirely geographical, the second entirely anthropological, and the third is given up to a description of maladies, commencing with two introductory chapters; the first describing the diseases of each zone, and the second, containing eleven pages, is a “Glance at the general Characteristics of Disease in each Race.” “In fact,” says Dr. Boudin,155in pointing out the novelty of these enquiries, “there are some races who show themselves completely rebellious to certain pathological forms, for which others, on the contrary, show a remarkable pre-disposition.”

Two particular maladies have been pointed out in this point of view,—marsh-poisoningin all its forms, andyellow fever.Africans are evidently, at least in parts, exempt from these two diseases, which only attack them with a very minor force. It has been said that the question of marsh-poisoning is still very doubtful; it was allowed that the Negroes were less exposed to its attacks than other men, but it was desired to enter the question of acclimatisation156into the calculation of facts. All the countries we know that are inhabited by blacks, being nearly all subject to the noxious influence of marshes, it was pretended that even stranger Negroes had acquired from infancy, in their own country, an immunity by which they benefited later in life, and even had the power of handing it down to their descendants.157It is thus that some have explained, for instance, the unhappy results of the English expedition to the Niger in 1841. Out of 145 whites belonging to the crews, the three vessels, after a navigation of about forty-nine days on the river, had lost 40 men (130 were attacked). Out of the twenty-five coloured men embarked in England, and who were mostly born in America, eleven were seized with illness, but not one of them died.158This individual acclimatisation can only be either a fiction, or a proof in support of the ideas which we defend. In the presence of a morbid influence which shows itself and continues, two things alone can happen,—either destruction, or permanent (that is to say,specific) modifications of œconomy, in harmony with the ordinary manner in which this animal population continues to exist.

The yellow fever, exercising its ravages upon shores equally distant from whites and negroes, has brought very decisive arguments into the question. We know, in fact, that the whites suffer in America from the black vomit in all its violence; whilst the Negroes are not attacked by it, or if they are, its effects are insignificant.159A ferocious maxim, one worthy of the conquerors, has explained—since the sixteenth century—this prerogative, which the Spaniards had so much reason to envy, “If we did not hang a Negro, he would never die.”160If some authors have timidly advanced the theory of a former acclimatisation161with regard to marsh-poisoning, the greater number of observers, Fenner, Nott, and Bryant, ought to admit that there was, even in the constitution of the black man, an obstacle—otherwise absolutely unknown in his nature—to the manifestation of the yellow fever;162and that the black blood appeared to carry on this resisting force to the mixed breed, even if they were born far away.163

An extremely interesting experiment relating to this immunity of the Negro from the yellow fever, was tried largely during the disastrous Mexican expedition, and the conditions of this experience ought to give it a capital value. At first, our soldiers paid a terrible tribute to this scourge, and then the French Government took up the excellent idea of profiting by the resistance of the Negro race to the black vomit. Itasked for a battalion of blacks from the viceroy of Egypt, consisting of men recruited from the limits of Soudan, from Berber to Khartoum. It was not without anxiety that the issue of this physiological experiment was watched, since it did not happen, as in our laboratories,in anima vili. Some had confidence in the functional uniformity of the Negro race, as being beyond all local action; others believing wrongly, as we said, in a former acclimatisation of the only inhabitants of the western coast of Africa, expected to find that all these Negroes from the other side of the continent would perish. However, in spite of what they had at first said, they could very soon verify the almost complete immunity of the Negro battalion at Vera-Cruz.164It was the first time, if we are not mistaken, that anthropology has been directly applied in the Old World to social science. Some time ago anthropologists were consulted by the government of the Northern States of America upon certain questions of slavery, at the time when terrible dissensions were budding in the shadows of the distance.

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