3. By the Hair: Shape, Color, Abundance.—Some of the most modern classifications of the human race are based almost exclusively on the hair. It is claimed that no other portion of the economy is so permanent and so characteristic. Pruner Bey in France, Ernst Haeckel and Friedrich Muller in Germany, are distinguished names which have supported and given popularity to this view. They claim that the human race can be broadly separated into two great divisions, the one marked by woolly, the other by smooth hair, which in turn are capable of several subdivisions.
Shape of the Hair.—These peculiarities of the hair depend on its con formation. When the cross-section of a hair is examined with the micro scope, it is found to be not circular, but more or less oval in shape (AA r, fig. 6). The less the difference between its maximum and minimum diameters—in other words, the more nearly the cross-section approaches a true circle—the smoother, coarser, and straighter is the hair ; the greater the difference between the diameters—that is, the flatter each hair is— the finer, harder, and curlier it becomes.
Straight-haired and Woolly-haired Races.—The variations in these respects are very noticeable. The nearest approach to a circular form is found among the South American Indians, where the proportion of the short to the long diameter of the hair is 95 : too. In most of the American tribes it is about 90 : too. Next to these stand the Mongolian nations of Eastern Asia, with an average of 85 : roo. In the European race the shorter diameter sinks to about three-fourths of the longer, or 75 : Too. It is further reduced in the Australians to about 70 : TOO ; among the Hottentots and Bushmen, to about one-half, or 50 : too ; and finally, in the Papuas of New Guinea, to an average of one-third, or 33 : loo, some rare cases sinking as low as one-quarter, or 25 : roo.
When the smaller diameter is less than half the longer, the hair will felt like the wool of a sheep, though in no instance does human hair equal wool in this respect.
All the tribes having woolly hair originally lived near the equator or south of it ; all were in the Old World, and, except the Papuas, on the continent of Africa ; in all of them the skull, as a rule, is long and narrow (dolichocephalic) ; in all the jaws protrude beyond the vertical line of the face (prognathic) ; all have remained on the lower stages of culture, being neither city-builders nor founders of great states ; all are black or dark in hue ; and in them all there are peculiarities of structure which assimilate them more closely to the highest apes than is the case with other varieties of the species. Hence they are considered to have
been an extremely early variation of the species, and either to have retro graded from the original type or not to have shared in an equal degree in the development which it has undergone.
Woolly hair itself has two modes of growth, which have been taken for ethnological distinctions. Either it is equally distributed over the scalp, like the fleece on the back of a sheep, or it grows in a number of separate tufts or bunches, which have been likened to the arrangement of bristles in a shoe-brush. The Papuas, the Hottentots, and some of the tribes of the Soudan present the latter characteristic, while the majority of Negroes have the former.
A similar twofold distinction is observable in the smooth-haired races. Either they have straight, stiff hair, like the Chinese and the American Indians, or their locks are wavy or curly, like those of most Europeans.
Abundance or Deficiency of peculiarity of the hair which has to do with the distinction of races is its abundance on the person. While the hair on the head grows with great luxuriance in the Mongolian and American races, baldness being very uncommon among them, their beard is almost always very scanty, and they have very few hairs on the surface of the body compared with the European. This is true also of the Hottentot and Papuan tribes, and measurably so of most African Negroes. Among the Australians, on the other hand, a full beard is not uncommon.
Classcation of the Races by the comparing these peculiar ities Prof. Friedrich Muller has proposed the following classification of the human race on the basis of the character of their hair :