on the head. There are four species, P. macrocephalus, or the spermaceti whale, is sixty feet in length, and the head is nearly one-third of the bulk of the whole animal. It is found in the European seas, and on the coast of New England; swims with extreme swiftness, and persecutes the white shark with violent and fatal enmity. The lump fish, also, it pursues with great avidity. It is one of the most difficult of all whales to be taken, and survives, for several days, the deepest wounds given it by the harpoon. Its skin, oil, and tendons, are all converted by the Greenlanders to some valuable purpose, and its flesh is not altogether rejected by them. The spermaceti is found in a vast hollow in the head of this animal, and, when warm, is nearly fluid, but dries by exposure to the air into flaky masses. bergris, also, is produced by this species, and consists, in fact, of the faces of the animal. The origin of this substance had long baffled the curiosity of the inquirer, but is at length unquestionably ascertained.

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PHYSICIANS. By statute 3. Hen. VIII. c. 11. no person within London, nor within seven miles of the same, shall practise as a physician or surgeon, except he be examined and approved by the Bishop of London, or by the Dean of St. Paul's, assisted by four persons of the faculty, under a penalty of 51. per month, half to the King, and half to the informer. A doctor of physic of the Universities must still have a license from the College of Physicians, to enable him to practise in London, and within seven miles of the same. In the country such a doctor of physic may practise, but no other, without license from the College. It has been said, it is murder if a person die under the care of a medical practitioner not qualified; but although it might be punishable as a misdemeanor, yet it certainly cannot be murder.

PHYSICS, a term made use of by Dr. Keil and others, for natural philosophy, explains the doctrines of natural bodies, their phenomena, causes and effects, with the various affections, motions, and operations. Experimental physics inquire into the reasons and nature of things by experiments, as in hydrostatics, pneumatics, optics, &c. but more particularly in chemistry, in which more has been done the last thirty years than could possibly have been conceived by the imagination. Mechanical physics explain the appearances of nature from the matter, motion, structure, and figures of bodies, and their

parts, according to the settled laws of nature. See MECHANICS.

PHYSIOGNOMY, is the peculiar combination of features, which designates the feelings and dispositions of the mind. That every individual of the human race possesses a set of distinctive marks, in the form of the head and the outlines of the countenance, is visible to the most inattentive observer: and it is well known, that those marks insensibly lead us to form conclusions as to the nature and inclinations of persons to whom we are introduced for the first time, which may sometimes be correct, but are frequently

erroneous.

Every man is unconsciously a physiognomist; he feels a partiality or dislike, which partakes exceedingly of the sense of the lines in one of Richardson's novels, "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But I do not like thee, Dr. Fell."

Admitting this fact, as to mankind in general, it will be proper to observe, that however the study of physiognomy may be commended and recommended, it should be exercised with great discretion and judgment, or very fatal, or, at least, very disagreeable consequences may be the result; for it must be remembered, that numerous causes exist to derange and discompose the human frame during infancy, and even before the birth, which may impress a character or expression on the features, descriptive of evil passions that never existed in the mind of the unfortunate person so situated; for instance, it would be inhuman to judge of the soul of one who has had the vertebræ of his back doubled, from the expression of his face, which is uniformly that of peevishness and confirmed ill-nature; nor would it be just, to think a man capable of every kind of wickedness, whose head and face bear the marks of malice, through a deformity existing perhaps before his birth. Were the bones incompressible from the instant they are formed, and the muscles incapable of being moulded to their shape, in short, did mankind receive a decided and unalterable outline from the Creator, we should then make correct conclusions from the beauty or irregularity of his face.

Having thus hinted at the impropriety of forming hasty conclusions, we shall give a sketch of what has been advanced on this subject by a person of great observation, and extremely capable of drawing just inferences, but who was rather tinc

tured by enthusiasm. Lavater asserts, that "each creature is indispensable in the vast compass of creation; but each individual," he adds, "is not alike informed of the truth of this fact, as man only is conscious that his own place cannot be supplied by another." The idea thus conceived, he thinks one of the best consequences of physiognomy, and he exults, that the most deformed and wicked persons are still superior to the most perfect and beautiful animal, because they always have it in their power to amend, and in some degree to restore themselves to the place assigned them in creation; and however their features may be distorted by the indulgence of their passions, still the image of the Creator remains, from which sin only is to be expelled, to render the likeness nearer perfection.

The aid of Lavater is not necessary to inform us, that there exists a national physiognomy, by which a stranger in any given country may be known, by those who are possessed of previous observation, to be a Spaniard, a German, or a Frenchman, and which impels even the very vulgar to exclaim, "He is a foreigner," though they cannot appropriate him to his country; but the mind of Lavater, being almost exclusively turned to this pursuit, we must profit and be informed by his relation of the distinguishing traits which point out the natives of different regions. This great physiognomist observes, that the placing of several persons together, selected from nations remotely situated from each other, gives at one glance their surprising varieties of visage; and yet he acknowledges, that to point out those variations is a task of considerable difficulty, and his assertion, that this may be done with more facility from an individual than the mass of population, seems extremely probable. The French, he thinks, do not possess equally commanding traits with the English, nor are they so minute as those of the Germans, and it is to the peculiarities of their teeth, and manner of laughing, that he attributed his power of deciding on their origin. The Italians he appropriated by the form of their noses, their diminutive eyes, and projecting chins. The eye-brows and foreheads are the criterion by which to judge of the natives of England. The Dutch possess a particular rotundity of the head, and have weak, thin hair: the Germans, numerous angles and wrinkles about the eyes and in the cheeks; and the Russians are remarkable for black and light coloured hair, and flat noses. VOL. X.

It must be extremely grateful to the natives of England to reflect, that Lavater considers them, in the aggregate, the most favoured upon the earth with respect to personal beauty: he says, they have the shortest and best arched foreheads, and that only upwards, and towards the eye-brows, sometimes gradually declining, and in other cases are rectilinear, with full, medullary noses, frequently round, but very seldom pointed, and lips equally large, well defined, curved, and beautiful, with the addition of full round chins. Still greater perfections are attributed to the eyes of Englishmen, which are said to possess the expression of manly steadiness, generosity, liberality, and frankness, to which the eyebrows greatly contribute. With complexions infinitely fairer than those of the Germans, they have the advantage of escaping the numerous wrinkles found in the faces of the latter, and their general contour is noble and commanding.

Judging from the ladies he had seen of our country, and from numerous portraits of others, Lavater was led to say, they appeared to him wholly composed of nerve and marrow, tall and slender in their forms, gentle, and as distant from coarseness and harshness as earth from heaven. His own countrymen he found to have many characteristic varieties; those of Zurich are generally meagre, and of the middle size, and either corpulent or very thin.

To pursue this subject something further, it will be found, that the people of Lapland, and parts of Tartary, are of very diminutive stature, and of extremely savage countenances, formed by flat faces, broad noses, high cheek bones, large mouths, thick lips, peaked chins, and their eyes are of a yellow brown, almost black, with the lids retiring towards the temples; nor are the females of this disagreeable race more favoured by nature; and each sex is distinguished by the grossest manners, and minds stupid beyond credibility; but of all the varieties of the human species, the inhabitants of the coast of New Holland seem the most debased and miserable; those are tall and slender, and to add to the deformity of thick lips, large noses, and wide mouths, they are taught from their infancy to keep their eyes nearly closed, to avoid the insects which swarm around them.

Turning to the more favourable side of this picture of national physiognomy, we shall find the people of Cachemire, the Georgians, the Circassians, and Mingre

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lians, erect, noble, and formed for admiration, particularly the females, whose charms of face and person are proverbial. There are too many local and physical causes for this difference in the external appearance of the inhabitants of the different parts of the world, for enumeration and explanation in so confined a space as that to which we are limited. Professor Kant, of Konigsberg, in an essay on this subject, divides the human race into four principal classes, into which the intermediate gradations may readily be resolved; those are the Whites, the Negroes, the Huns, (Monguls or Calmucs), and the Hindoos, or people of Hindostan. Circumstances purely external may be the accidental, but cannot be the original causes of what is assimilated or inherited; as well could chance produce a body completely organized. "Man," says the Professor, "was undoubtedly intended to be the inhabitant of all climates and all soils. Hence the seeds of many internal propensities must be latent in him, which shall remain inactive, or be put in motion according to his situation on the earth: so that in progressive generation, he shall appear as if born for that particular soil in which he seems planted."

In the opinion of this gentleman, the air and the sun are the two causes which most powerfully influence the operations of propagation, and give a lasting developement of germ and propensities, or in other words, the above powers may be the origin of a new race.

Food may produce some slight variations; those, however, must soon disappear after emigration, and it is evident, that whatever affects the propagating powers, does not act upon the support of life, but upon the original principle, the very source of animal conformation and motion. It has been observed that man degenerates in stature and faculties the nearer he is situated to the frigid zone; this seems a necessary consequence of that situation, for this obvious reason; were men of the common stature in those regions of extreme cold, the impelling power of the heart must be increased, to force the blood through the extremities, which would otherwise chill and become totally useless; but as the Creator did not think it useful to adopt this mode of preserving the limbs, they have been shortened, for the purpose of confining the circulating fluid to the trunk, where the natural heat accumulating, the whole body has a greater proportion of that comfortable sensation than strangers feel when visiting those northern countries.

The propensity to flatness observable in the prominent parts of the countenance of the persons under consideration, exposed to the effects of cold, is accounted for by that very circumstance; and it appears probable, that their high cheekbones, and small imperfect eyes, are so contrived, to preserve the latter from the piercing effects of the wind, and the of fensive brilliancy of the almost eternal snows. The Abbe Winkelman attributes the enormous and disgusting lips of the Negroes to the heat of the climate they inhabit; others account for the blackness of their skin, by supposing "the surplus of the ferruginous, or iron particles, which have lately been discovered to exist in the blood of man, and which, by the evaporation of the phosphoric acidities, of which all Negroes smell so strong, being cast upon the retiform membrane, occasions the blackness which appears through the cuticle, and this strong retention of the ferruginous particles seems to be nccessary, in order to prevent the general relaxation of the parts."

Professor Camper concludes, from long and attentive observation, applied to the skulls of the inhabitants of many different nations, which he had dissected in numerous cases soon after death, that it is extremely difficult to draw any head accurately in profile, and to define the lines of the countenance, and their angles with the horizon; but he thinks he has been thus led to the discovery of the maximum and minimum of this angle. He commenced his operations with the monkey, and proceeded with the Negro and European; and, finally, he examined the profiles of the most valuable statues of antiquity. With respect to the breadth of the cheek-bones, he found that the larg est were amongst the Calmucs, and considerably smaller amongst the Asiatic Negroes. The Chinese, the natives of the Molucca and other Asiatic Islands, appeared to him to have broad cheeks and projecting jaw bones, particularly the under, which is very high, and almost forms a right angle on the contrary, those of Europeans are extremely obtuse, and of Negroes even more so. Succeeding thus far, the Professor acknowledges he was foiled in his attempts to discriminate the differences in the European nations; nor was he more successful with the Jews, whose countenances are possessed of many marked peculiarities; and yet this gentleman asserts, he never had been able to draw them with any tolerable accuracy; and, in this particular, the Italian face was equally difficult.

Making due allowance for the aberrations of the imagination, the Professor either had, or conceited he had, attained the faculty of distinguishing the heads of English, Scots, and Irish soldiers; but he was incapable of describing the marks which announced their profession. More reliance may, however, be placed on his assertion, that the upper and under jaws of Europeans are less broad than the breadth of the skull, and that among the Asiatics they are much broader.

The most unequivocal proofs exist of family physiognomy, or in other words, family resemblance. Buffon, Bonnet, Haller, and many others, have endeavoured to account for this circumstance, but, as may be supposed, without the least probable success; we shall therefore pass this part of the subject in silence, as it must be evident that we have no kind of data on which to argue, nor can the secret operations of nature ever be penetrated which relate to the formation of man. Much of the general resemblance between members of a family depend upon a congeniality of sentiments and manners; each turn of thought gives a peculiar expression to the features; and as those are sufficiently strong to explain to what class they belong, to an indifferent spectator it is by no means improbable that they assist at least in designating a family. Very intimate friends are sometimes thought to resemble each other, and a real or fancied resemblance often occurs between man and wife; when it is considered that connections of the above descriptions are very often formed by persons who had never previously seen each other, it is impossible to doubt but that the similarity of mind thus generated influences the muscles, and disposing them into the same kind of expression, a muscular likeness occurs, which has no influence upon the bones, and would probably vanish, were the connection dissolved, and the parties examined after long separation. Lavater indulged in many flights of fancy, when treating on this part of the science of physiognomy; he even imagined, that a person deeply enamoured of another, and thinking intensely on the form and position of the features, might assume a resemblance of the admired object, though miles of space intervened between them; and pursuing his mental dream he adds, that it is equally probable an individual, meditating revenge in secret, may compose his countenance into a likeness of him who was to be its victim.

The incorrectness of the latter fancy may be exposed by merely observing,

that the person under the influence of the passion of revenge must bear in his countenance the lines expressive of that restless affection; now as the object intended to be injured is unconscious of the secret machinations against him, he may at the instant be engaged in some benevolent pursuit, or may feel some internal joy, which moulds his features into an expression directly opposite to that of his adversary, who may have generally seen him thus; for revenge is often aimed by the wicked at the best of men; consequently the countenance of a fiend, grinning with malice, cannot at the same time beam with a complacency arising from a set of features entirely unruffled.

Before we enter upon a description of the marks, which, according to Lavater, point out the character of the possessor, it may be proper to give one or two instances of the fallacy, and of the truth, of the conclusions drawn from them, in order that our readers may form their own conclusions, as to the folly or propriety of entertaining a propensity to form a judgment of mankind from the shapes of their noses, eyes, foreheads, and chins.

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M. Sturtz declared to Lavater, that he once happened to see a criminal condemned to the wheel, who, with satanic wickedness, had murdered his benefactor, and who yet had the benevolent and open countenance of an angel of Guido. It is not impossible, adds this gentleman, to discover the head of a Regulus among guilty criminals, or of a vestal in the house of correction." Lavater admits this assertion in its fullest extent, but his reasoning to reconcile it to his system is by no means conclusive.

When we hear of any atrocious act, the natural abhorrence of vice and cruelty implanted in us leads the imagination to form a portrait of the perpetrator, suited to the deformity of the mind capable of committing it; without reflecting, that, had such an index existed in the countenance of the abhorred object, it is most probable, his murderous and horrible exterior would have placed mankind so far on their guard as to detect his intentions. Upon viewing the culprit, we are perhaps surprised to find that there is nothing particularly indicative of cruelty in the outlines of his face, and we industriously endeavour to force each into the immediate form of our pre-conceived portrait. This occasions us to read lurking villainy in his eyes, and convert the wrinkles of disease, or approaching age, into the form of a dæmon; and we depart, exclaiming against the striking con