piration which, it is alleged, mars the
attractiveness of women. If this is so it would seem that the nostrils
of the modern European are rather too easily offended by the natural
smell of his kind. However this may be there is no evidence for
believing that the African's bodily smell is more animal-like than that
of any other race.

If there is one thing which the white man of South Africa is sure about
it is the comparative thickness of the "nigger skull," but this notion
also would appear to be one of the many which have no foundation in
fact.

The opinion of medical men, based upon actual observation and
measurement, is to the effect that there is no evidence to support the
contention that the Native skull is thicker than that of the
European.[5] That the thick, woolly hair of the Native may account for
his supposed comparative invulnerability to head injuries has not
occurred to the layman observer who is more often given to vehement
assertion than to careful enquiry.

The supposed arrest of the brain of the Bantu at the age of puberty
owing to the closing of the sutures of the skull at an earlier age than
happens with Europeans is another popular notion for which a sort of
pseudo-scientific authority may be quoted from encyclopaedias and old
books of travel. The opinion of modern authorities on this subject is
that those who say that the closure of the sutures of the skull
determines brain growth would or should also say that the cart pulls the
horse, for, if the sutures of the Native skull close at a somewhat
earlier date in the average Native than in the average European then it
simply means that the Native reaches maturity slightly earlier than the
average white man.

The loss of mental alertness which is said by some to be peculiar to the
Natives at the time of puberty is very often met with in the European
youth or girl at that period of life. Competent observers have of late
years come to the conclusion that this supposed falling off in
intelligence, in so far as it may differ in degree from what has so
often been noticed in European boys and girls at that point of
development, is due to psychological and not to physiological causes. It
is realised that this lapse in mental power of concentration in European
youth in the stage of early adolescence is prevented by the force of
example and fear of parental and general reprobation coupled with
unbroken school-discipline, all of which factors are as yet sel