The Descent of Man

vels,' p. 64. On the Kaffirs, the Rev. J. Shooter,
'The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country,'
1857, p. 1.) Mr. Galton, in speaking to me about
the natives of S. Africa, remarked that their
ideas of beauty seem very different from ours;
for in one tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls
were not admired by the natives.
Turning to other quarters of the world; in Java,
a yellow, not a white girl, is considered, according
to Madame Pfeiffer, a beauty. A man of
Cochin China "spoke with contempt of the wife
of the English Ambassador, that she had white
teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like that of
potato- flowers." We have seen that the Chinese
dislike our white skin, and that the N. Americans
admire "a tawny hide." In S. America, the
Yuracaras, who inhabit the wooded, damp slopes
of the eastern Cordillera, are remarkably
pale-coloured, as their name in their own language
expresses; nevertheless they consider
European women as very inferior to their own.