NEGRO, the designation of the dis tinctly dark-skinned,as opposed to the fair, yellow and brown races of mankind (from Lat. niger,black). In this sense it embraces the dark races, of the intertropical and sub-tropical regions of the eastern hemis phere, from Senegambia, West Africa, to the Fijian islands in the Pacific. It is con venient, however, to refer to the dark skinned inhabitants of this zone by the collective term of Negroids, and to reserve the word Negro for the tribes found in Africa south of the Sahara and north of a not very well-defined line running roughly from the gulf of Biafra with a south-easterly trend across the equator to the mouth of the Tana. The Bantu Negroids are south of this line. The yellowish-brown Bushman and Hottentot (qq.v.) peoples of South Africa possess certain Negroid characters, the tightly curled hair, the broad nose, the tendency towards prog nathism ; but the relation is not close. The Negroids of Africa, Melanesia and Australasia have in common a number of charac teristics such as :—A dark skin, varying from dark brown, reddish brown or chocolate to nearly black ; dark tightly curled hair, flat in transverse section, of the "woolly" or the "frizzly" type; a greater or less tendency to prognathism; eyes dark brown with yellowish cornea ; nose more or less broad and flat ; and large teeth. The Negro hair is flat, issues from the epidermis at a right
angle, is spirally twisted or crisped, has no central duct, the colouring matter being disseminated through the cortex and intermediate fibres, while the cortex itself is covered with numer ous rough, pointed filaments, adhering loosely to the shaft ; lastly, the Negro pile will felt, like wool, whereas true hair cannot be felted. The true Negro (western Sudan type) is of tall stature, burly, short-legged, usually long-headed, with bulging forehead. A broad headed element of obscure origin extends across the continent. (For the Negro in the United States see