South of the Atlas, and of the Great Desert, Middle Africa exhibits a new type of humanity in the NEGRO, with his dark skin, woolly hair, projecting jaws, and thick lips.  As a rule, the skull of the Negro is remarkably long; it rarely approaches the broad type, and never exhibits the roundness of the Mongolian.  A cultivator of the ground, and dwelling in villages; a maker of pottery, and a worker in the useful as well as the ornamental metals; employing the bow and arrow as well as the spear, the typical negro stands high in point of civilization above the Australian.

Resembling the Negroes in cranial characters, the BUSHMEN of South Africa differ from them in their yellowish brown skins, their tufted hair, their remarkably small stature, and their tendency to fatty and other integumentary outgrowths; nor is the wonderful click with which their speech is interspersed to be overlooked in enumerating the physical characteristics of this strange people.

The so-called “Drawidian” populations of Southern Hindostan lead us back, physically as well as geographically, towards the Australians; while the diminutive MINCOPIES of the Andaman Islands lie midway between the Negro and Negrito races, and, as Mr. Busk has pointed out, occasionally present the rare combination of Brachycephaly, or short-headedness, with woolly hair.

In the preceding progress along the outskirts of the habitable world, eleven readily distinguishable stocks, or persistent modifications, of mankind, have been recognized.  I have purposely omitted such people as the Abyssinians and the Hindoos, who there is every reason to believe result from the intermixture of distinct stocks.  Perhaps I ought, for like reasons, to have ignored the Mincopies.  But I do not pretend that my enumeration is complete or, in any sense, perfect.  It is enough for my purpose if it be admitted (and I think it cannot be denied) that those which I have mentioned exist, are well marked, and occupy the greater part of the habitable globe.

In attempting to classify these persistent modifications after the manner of naturalists, the first circumstance that attracts one’s attention is the broad contrast between the people with straight and wavy hair, and those with crisp, woolly, or tufted hair.  Bory de St. Vincent, noting this fundamental distinction, divided mankind accordingly into the two primary groups of Leiotrichi and Ulotrichi,—­terms which are open to criticism, but which I adopt in the accompanying table, because they have been used.  It is better for science to accept a faulty name which has the merit of existence, than to burthen it with a faultless newly invented one.

Under each of these divisions are two columns, one for the Brachycephali, or short heads, and one for the Dolichocephali[1], or long heads.  Again, each column is subdivided transversely into four compartments, one for the “leucous,” people with fair complexions and yellow or red hair; one for the “leucomelanous,” with dark hair and pale skins; one for the “xanthomelanous,” with black hair and yellow, brown, or olive skins; and one for the “melanous,” with black hair and dark brown or blackish skins.