As against the ethnological significance of the hypertrophy of the nymphæ, which constitutes the “viel besprochene Hottentotten-Schurze,” the case is still stronger. For not only may this peculiarity be found amongst other African races, such as the Berber, Egyptian, and Negro (according to Hartmann, _l.c._ p. 489), and the Abantu and Sudan natives (according to Fritsch, _Die Eingeborenen_, pp. 282, 283), where its presence might be reasonably explained by reference to peculiarities of diet or climate, but it may, according to Hartmann, be paralleled by observation carried on in the very different surroundings of North Europe. The words of the last-named authority, whose intimate acquaintance at once with Africa and Prussia will not be questioned, are to the following effect: “Die viel besprochene Hottentotten-Schurze ist für Jemanden welcher fleissig die geburtshülfliche Station oder den Secirsaal einer grösseren Universität, z. B. Berlin besucht, auch Berber, Aegypter, und Nigritierfrauen ganz nackt gesehen hat, kein auszeichnendes Rassenmerkmal mehr.”[73] The old view which ascribed a Mongolian origin to the Khoi-Khoin races is now pretty generally given up. A more important subject would, if I had space, be furnished me for discussion in the recent discoveries in Central Africa,[74] which appears to point to the existence of kinship between the pigmy Akka and Obongo tribes and the Bushman. The main points which appeared to former writers to indicate Mongolian affinities are the yellow as opposed to the black colour of the skin, the prominence of the cheek bones, and the supposed obliquity of the opening of the eyelids. This last peculiarity, as Fritsch (_Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika’s_, p. 286) has shown, is due simply to the disagreeable necessity of keeping the eyelids constantly half-closed, owing to the glare and, as others have pointed out, the sandflies, to which these homeless savages are self-exposed. The Swiss Professor, Schiess-Gemuscus, of Basle, has similarly explained the causation of snow-blindness (see _Archiv. für Ophthalmologie_, xxv. 3, p. 173), by reference to the blepharospasmus and conjunctivitis, produced by the dryness and the glare of the upland snowfield; and I apprehend that the osseous structures underlying the organs protecting the eye may be reasonably supposed to undergo some modification in correlation with the increased demand for work, which “blepharospasmus” expresses as being thrown upon the muscular structures which they support. Thus the prominent malar arch and the forwardly projecting outer segments of the orbit, as seen alike in the Mongolian of the treeless steppe, in the Eskimo of the snow-desert, and the Bushman of the sun-burnt South African uplands, may receive a physiological as opposed to a morphological explanation. But, when we come further to consider the structure and composition of the various segments of the orbital ring