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108

tion from the tenderest period of infancy when the features are most susceptible of impression, and begin to assume a settled habit, and continuing, and repeating it with little remission till they are fixed in the ultimate point of deformity, they there constitute the Tartar, Samoiede, or Esquimaux countenance. 

The principal characteristics of that countenance, the causes of which may require further illustration, are the depression of the middle of the face, and the prominence of the forehead, in the northern Asiatic; and, in those people who inhabit the extremities of the North, both of Asia and of Europe, the general weakness as well as smallness of the eyes.

The middle of the face is the part which is most exposed to the immediate action of the cold, and consequently suffers most from its power of contraction, which tends to impede the growth of the parts. And a circumstances, perhaps not unworthy of notice, may deserve to be mentioned as contributing to increase the effect.  Every person in a cold atmosphere naturally draws his breath more through the nostrils* than the mouth.  This will, therefore, be

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 * A frosty air inhaled by the nostrils chills the body much less than taken in by the mouth.  Nature therefore prompts
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a common habit of all people inhabiting very cold regions.  Thus the impluse of a chilling, and almost congealing current of air directed against that feature, and the parts adjacent, must greatly tend to restrain the freedom of their expansion.*

On the same principles, the next peculiarity, or distinguishing characteristic of the Tartar physiognomy, which is the prominence of the forehead, is easily explained.  The superior warmth and impluse of the blood in the brain, which fills the upper part of the head, will naturally increase its relative magnitude; hence the forehead and the brows will be proportionably projected over the contracted parts immediately beneath them.

The eyes in those rigorous climates toward the North of Tartary, and in Lapland, are singularly affected.  The prominence of the eye-brows gives them the appearance of being sunk in the head;

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* men almost involuntarily, in extreme cold, to keep the mouth closed, and even to press the jaws strongly together.

* By directing a constant stream of air against the bulb of a thermometer, touching it at the same time with any volatile fluid that by its speedy evaporation, will be continually carrying off some portion of the internal heat, the mercury, even in warm weather, will suffer as great a contraction as it would by many additional degrees of cold.
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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 14:25:20