NEGRO NEHLIG 217 very torpid under disease. They seldom have a fetid breath, but transpire much excremen- titious matter by means of the glands of the skin; there is also much oily matter in the skin. The negro flourishes under the fiercest heats and unhealthy dampness of the tropics, withstanding the virulent endemics and epi- demics of the country where the white man soon dies ; and the race does not diminish, like the aboriginal American, in contact with civil- ization. The senses are acute ; the voice in the males is hoarse and not powerful, and in the females high and shrill. Albinoes are not uncommon among negro races in all countries. Negroes produce with the white and other races a hybrid race, fertile for a few genera- tions; but, unless mixed with the original stock, tending to extermination by disease and sterility. The offspring of a negro and white is called a mulatto ; of a mulatto and white, a quadroon; a greater intermixture of white blood than this can with difficulty be distin- guished by the ordinary observer from a dark- skinned white. The African negroes display considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of weapons, in the working of iron, in the weav- ing of mats, cloth, and baskets from dyed grass- es, in the dressing of skins of animals, in the structure of their huts and household utensils, and in the various implements and objects of use in a barbarous state of society. Their re- ligion consists in the worship of idols and fe- tiches, representing a supreme power which they all acknowledge ; they believe in good and evil spirits, in witchcraft, charms and spells, omens, lucky and unlucky days, &c. ; they make fetiches of serpents, elephants' teeth, and many similar objects, and reverence wooden images and sacred things, which they think have re- ceived a peculiar power from their divinities to drive away evil spirits, and protect them from danger, disease, and witchcraft. They make prayers and offerings to their idols, and have sacred songs, festivals, dances, ceremo- nies, and places; they sacrifice animals and sometimes human victims, especially during obsequies; they have priests and holy men, who are also magicians and doctors. They believe generally in an after life, without any distinct idea of retribution, and some tribes in the transmigration of the human soul into a gorilla, or other beast, bird, reptile, or fish ; they have great fear of ghosts and apparitions ; they become ready converts to foreign reli- gions, whether Islamism, Catholicism, or Prot- estantism. Being very fond of music, they have many ingeniously contrived musical in- struments, generally of a noisy character ; they have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and axe of a cheerful disposition; though cruel to their enemies and prisoners, and setting little value on human life, they are naturally kind-hearted, hospitable to strangers, and communicative of their joys and sorrows; the females are re- markably affectionate as mothers and children, and as attendants on the sick, even to foreign- ers. They are less dirty in their persons and dwellings than most other barbarous races. They are ready to receive instruction, and to profit by it up to a certain point; quick to perceive the beauty of goodness, they generally appreciate the services of the missionaries in their behalf, and were not their teachings coun- teracted by the intoxicating drinks brought by traders, they would probably in time, in outward observances if not in reality, merit the name of semi-Christian communities. For negro languages, see AFEICA, LANGUAGES OF, and articles on the more important tribes. NEGRO, Rio. See Rio NEGEO. NEGROPONT. See EUBOZA. IVEIIEMIAII, a Jewish governor of Judea under the Persians, and cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes Longimanus. He was the son of Hakaliah, received the surname or title of Tirshatha, and is the author of at least a portion of the Scriptural book which bears his name, a continuation of the historical book of Ezra. It gives the most important events in the life of Nehemiah, very full ac- counts of the rebuilding of the gates and walls of Jerusalem, statistical information on the. increase of the people, and lists of priests and Levites. The authorship of chapters i. to vii. is generally ascribed to Nehemiah, while the following chapters are assumed by De Wette, Havernick, and others, to have been written by some other author. According to Ewald, Bertheau, and others, the books of Nehemiah, Ezra, and the Chronicles were ori- ginally one work. All the questions relating to the book of Nehemiah are fully discussed in De Wette's Einleitung in das Alte Testament (8th ed., revised by Dr. Schrader). The dates of his birth and death are unknown. In the history of his people, in which he played a prominent part during the period of the resto- ration under the Persians, he first appears in 445 B.C. (See HEBEEWS, vol. viii., p. 590.) NEHER, Bernliard TOD, a German painter, born at Biberach, Wurtemberg, in 1806. He studied under his father, Joseph Neher, and in Stutt- gart, Munich, and Rome, where the king of Wurtemberg enabled him to spend four years. After his return to Munich he executed, from cartoons which he had prepared in Italy, a stupendous fresco on the Isar gate of Munich, representing the entrance of the emperor Louis of Bavaria, which gave him a wide reputa- tion, but was unfortunately partly destroyed. In 1836 he went to Weimar to embellish the grand-ducal palace with frescoes illustrative of Schiller and Goethe. In 1844 he became director of the art school at Leipsic, and in 1846 of that of Stuttgart. He was made a di- rector of the latter in 1854, and decorations were conferred upon him in 1865 and 1869. NEHLIG, Victor, an American painter, born in Paris in 1830. He studied under Abel de Pujol and Cogniet, removed in 1856 to the United States, spent some time in Cuba, became a resident of New York, and in 1870 was chosen
