Independently of the colour of the iris, the eye also exhibits
differences which constitute so many characters, having at times a
real value in the development of the eyelids, and in the dimensions
of the palpebral fissure. Everyone knows _Chinese eyes_, which
slope from below upwards, and from inwards outwards. They have
been regarded as peculiar to Yellow races, whether pure or mixed.
Nevertheless these oblique eyes are found pretty frequently in
Europe, principally among women, and are united to a fairness and
freshness of colour which are almost exceptional, as well as to
features unanimously regarded as most pleasing.
The general form of the countenance, and some other peculiarities
drawn from the prominence of the cheek bones, from the form and
prominence or retreat of the chin, etc., favoured some considerations
analogous to the preceding. But here again the external characters
are wanting in the precision which we shall find in the osteological
characters.
X. _Characters drawn from the trunk and limbs._ When speaking of
proportions I have already pointed out some of these characters; I
will return to them when speaking of the skeleton. I will here only
make a few remarks, and point out two remarkable features.
One of the peculiarities, which, in our European eyes, chiefly
contribute to bodily beauty, is the width of the chest, of the waist,
and of the hips. A body of a uniform breadth we consider ungraceful.
It is a feature which is met with among several yellow and American
races. The comparison of these dimensions will furnish indices which
it is interesting to compare. But we have only taken that of the
chest, or more generally its circumference. To judge from the numbers
given by various authors, the Negroes of Fernando Po would have
the most fully developed chest. With them, its circumference would
be 95·2 c.m. (37·48 inches). The English would come next, and the
minimum observed would be among the Todas, whose thorax would only
have a circumference of 81·8 c.m. (32·2 inches).
The Hottentot, and especially the Bosjesman women, exhibit, in a
high degree, two peculiarities, which have for a long time been
considered special to them, but which have been met with elsewhere: I
mean _steatopygia_ and the _Hottentot’s apron_ (tablier). The first
consists of a strange development of the fatty folds in the buttocks,
from which results an enormous protuberance. The Hottentot Venus, of
which a model exists in the Paris Museum, gives a good example of it,
but it appears that this character can be still more exaggerated.
It is the reproduction in man of a feature noticed by Pallas as
characteristic of certain races of sheep of Central Asia, among which
the atrophy of the tail coincides with the appearance of enormous
fatty protuberances.
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