ocks over vast plains, and to the
tribes who creep along the shores of the Icy Sea, and live partly
by fishing, and in part on the flesh of their reindeers. These
nations have broad and lozenge-formed faces, and what I have termed
_pyramidal_ skulls.

"The Esquimaux, the Laplanders, Samoiedes, and Kamschatkans,
belong to this department, as well as the Tartar nations--meaning
the Mongolians, Tungusians, and nomadic races of Turks. In South
Africa, the Hottentots, formerly a nomadic people, who wandered
about with herds of cattle over the extensive plains of Kafirland,
resembling in their manner of life the Tungusians and the Mongols,
have also broadfaced, pyramidal skulls, and in many particulars of
their organization resemble the Northern Asiatics. Other tribes in
South Africa approximate to the same character, as do many of the
native races of the New World.

"The most civilized races, those who live by agriculture and the
arts of cultivated life, all the most intellectually improved
nations of Europe and Asia, have a shape of the head which differs
from both the forms above mentioned. The characteristic form of the
skull among these nations may be termed _oval_ or _elliptical_.

"We shall find hereafter that there are numerous instances of
transition from one of these shapes of the head to another, and
that these alterations have taken place in nations who have changed
their manner of life."

Blumenbach considered that the most important admeasurement of the skull
was derivable from the shape and size of the oval, seen when the skull
was viewed from above, looking vertically down upon it. Camper took as
the basis of his theory of the gradations of different genera of
mammalia, the angle formed by a line drawn from the aperture of the ear
to the base of the nose, and a tangent to the forehead and jaw.
Considering the increasing size of this angle to be the distinctive mark
of intellectual superiority, he viewed a negro as an intermediate animal
between an European and an ape. But Mr Owen has shown that the
observations of Camper and others, being applied to immature animals,
are not worthy of reliance; as the relations of all animals more closely
approximate if they be examined in an infant, than in an adult state.
The facial angle of the orang, which has been estimated at from 60 deg. to
64 deg., he