It is generally accepted that the African Natives have a bodily odour of their own which is _sui generis_ in that it is supposed to be different from that of other human races. Some early travellers have compared it with the smell of the female crocodile, and many people believe it to be a racial characteristic denoting a comparatively humble origin and intended by nature as a signal or warning for the rest of human kind against close physical contact with the African race. A recent student of the Negro question in America gives it as his opinion that this odour is "something which the Negroes will have difficulty in living down."[4] To most Europeans this smell seems to be more or less unpleasant but it must not be forgotten that it does not seem to affect the large numbers of white men of all nationalities who have found and still find pleasure in continued and intimate intercourse with African women. It would seem as if highly "refined" Europeans are nowadays given to exaggerate the sensation produced on their over delicate olfactory nerves by the exhalations caused by perspiration through a healthy and porous skin. In many of the so-called Ladies' Journals published in England and America advertisements appear regularly vaunting chemical preparations for the disguising of the odour of perspiration 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.