Like the Niam-niam, Mittoo, and Kredy, the Bongo rarely exceed a medium height. They differ, however, in several respects from the Dinka and other people of the lowland plains. Their prominent characteristics appeared to me to consist in a more compact form of limb, a sharper development of muscle, a wider formation of the skull, and generally a preponderating mass in the upper part of the body. Of 83 men that I measured I did not find one who had attained a height of 6 ft. 1 in., whilst the average height did not appear to me to be more than 5 ft. 7 in. Dinka and Bongo alike afforded very striking samples of the two great series of races which they severally represented, and each displayed the principal characteristics of their particular race in their stature, their complexion, and their form of skull. I cannot recall a single instance among the Bongo where the skull was of the long but narrow shape that is all but universal among the Dinka. Of many of these Bongo that I measured, I should pronounce that they would require to be classified as hardly removed from the lowest grade of the Brachycephaly. They appear themselves to be aware of this characteristic. I remember a discussion that once arose about a little boy, too young to speak, as to whether he was a Dinka or a Bongo. One of the interpreters, after minute examination of the proportions of the child’s head, came to an immediate, but decided, opinion that the boy was a Bongo, and in answer to my inquiry as to the grounds on which he so confidently based his decision, he explained that he judged from the fact that the head was broad; he went on, moreover, accompanying his words by corresponding gestures, to say that the Bongo women, as soon as an infant is born, press its head downwards, but the Dinka mothers, on the contrary, compress the heads of their babies from the sides. Now, although it is hardly credible that this manipulation on the part of the mothers would have any permanent influence on the conformation of the skulls of an entire nation, yet we may accept the statement as a significant proof of the high estimation in which the natives hold this attribute and token of their race. It has been proved by experience that in the most diverse nations of the earth, mothers will always be ready to use external means to promote as far as they can any signs of nationality in their offspring, ignorant of the certainty that these signs would of themselves, without assistance, be manifested eventually. In order to effect an actual alteration in the shape of the skull, such as may be observed amongst the Mongolian and American Indian tribes, it is necessary to employ continuous and forcible pressure, and to bind the head with straps and bandages from the earliest infancy.