As many as fifteen distinct
varieties of the human nose have been catalogued by Bertillon.
These are the principal bodily characters which the anthropologist uses to
distinguish races and by their means to determine the more immediate or
remote community of origin of comparable types. Many of these
characteristics, as indeed we may already see, are decidedly important in
connection with the second problem specified above, for in the case of the
flat triangular nose and projecting jaws of a low negroid we may discern
clear resemblances to certain features of the apes.
* * * * *
Long before the doctrine of evolution was understood and adopted, students
of the human races had been deeply impressed by their natural
resemblances. As early as 1672 Bernier divided human beings according to
certain of these fundamental similarities into four groups; namely, the
white European, the black African, the yellow Asiatic, and the Laplander.
Linnaeus, in the eighteenth century, included _Homo sapiens_ in his list of
species, recognizing four subspecies in the European, Asiatic, African,
and Indian of America. Blumenbach in 1775 added the Malay, thus giving the
five types that most of us learned in our school days.
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