Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/624

M. Bonpland and myself, of which several were deposited in the Museum of Natural History at Paris. I am inclined to believe that the barbarous custom which prevails among several hordes of pressing the heads of children between two boards had its origin in the idea that beauty consists in such a form of the frontal bone as to characterize the race in a decided manner. … The Greeks in the statues of heroes have raised the facial line from 85° to 100° above nature (Cuvier, Anatomie comparée, Vol. II, p. 6). The Aztecs, who never disfigure the heads of their children, represent their principal divinities, as their hieroglyphical manuscripts prove, with a head much more flattened than any I have ever seen among the Caribs.^[1]

The occipital flattening of the head among the Polynesians seems due to the fact that this form of head was common and artificial means were used to accentuate the type.^[2]

The Tahitians, among whom "long-nose" is considered as a word of insult, for the sake of beauty compress the forehead and the nose of the children.^[3]

A Hottentot father, suspecting that a child born with a prominent nose had been

begotten by an European, would not allow it the honor … of a flat nose; but ordered it to be brought up with the bridge of its nose in its natural situation, to denote its mother's infamy.^[4]

It is interesting to note also that, according to measurements by Schertzer and Schwarz, the feet of Chinese women in the unbound state seem distinguished by their smallness and this not only as compared with other nations, but also in comparison with the feet of Chinese men.^[5]

Some peoples, as the Chinese and Japanese, are distinguished by the peculiarity of the aperture of the eye, the outer angle of which has an oblique, upward direction. This character is by the artists of these peoples exaggerated for the purpose, as it seems, of exhibiting its beauty as contrasted with the red-haired barbarians.^[6]

We are prepared to find also that the preference for the prevailing type extends to the general type of female figure. Where this is naturally slender, the "cypress-slender" type is most

1. Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, translated by Black, Vol. I, p. 154, note.
2. See Waitz-Gerland, op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 27.
3. Waitz, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 305.
4. Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, Vol. I, p. 310.
5. Welcker, "Die Füsse der Chinesinnen," Archiv für Anthropologie, Vol. V, p. 149.
6. C. Vogt, Lectures on Man, English translation, p. 129.