It has often been said that, independently of the woolly hair and the complexion of the Negroes, there are sufficient differences between them and the rest of mankind to mark them as a very peculiar tribe.  This is true, and yet the principal differences are perhaps not so constant as many persons imagine.  In our West Indian colonies very many Negroes, especially females, are seen, whose figures strike Europeans as remarkably beautiful.  This would not be the case if they deviated much from the idea prevalent in Europe, or from the European standard of beauty.  Yet the slaves in the colonies, particularly in those of England, were brought from the west coast of intertropical Africa, where the peculiarities of figure, which in our eyes constitute deformity in the Negro, are chiefly prevalent.  The black people imported into the French and to some of the Portuguese colonies, from the eastern coast of the African continent, and from Congo, are much better made.  The most degraded and savage nations are the ugliest.  Among the most improved and the partially civilized, as the Ashantees, and other interior States, the figure and the features of the native people approach much more to the European.  The ugliest Negro tribes are confined to the equatorial countries; and on both sides of the equator, as we advance towards the temperate zones, the persons of the inhabitants are most handsome and well formed.

In a later period of this work I shall cite authors who have proved that many races belonging to this department of mankind are noted for the beauty of their features, and their fine stature and proportions.  Adanson has made this observation of the Negroes on the Senegal.  He thus describes the men.  “Leur taille est pour l’ordinaire au-dessus de la mediocre, bien prise et sans defaut.  Ils sont forts, robustes, et d’un temperament propre a la fatigue.  Ils ont les yeux noirs et bien fendus, peu de barbe, les traits du visage assez agreables.”  They are complete Negroes, for it is added that their complexion is of a fine black, that their hair is black, frizzled, cottony, and of extreme fineness.  The women are said to be of nearly equal stature with the men, and equally well made.  “Leur visage est d’une douceur extreme.  Elles ont les yeux noirs, bien fendus, la bouche et les levres petites, et les traits du visage bien proportionnes.  Il s’en trouve plusieurs d’une beaute parfaite.”  Mr. Rankin, a highly intelligent traveller, who reports accurately and without prejudice the results of his personal observation, has recently given a similar testimony in regard to some of the numerous tribes of northern Negro-land, who frequent the English colony of Sierra Leone.  In the skull of the more improved and civilized nations among the woolly-haired blacks of Africa, there is comparatively slight deviation from the form which may be looked upon as the common type of the human head.  We are assured, for example, by M. Golberry, that the Ioloffs, whose colour is