Browne was a Philadelphia ethnographer who studied the classes of human hair to differentiate the races. From the results he concluded that there were three separate races of man [and two of sheep], those with hair (the Native Americans and Asians; and the Europeans), and those with wool (guess which “race” had wool).
A reviewer from the ‘Journal of the Ethnological Society of London’ rightly concluded that “I cannot, however, occupy your time by reference to a work of so unsatisfactory a character.” Still, the book was seized upon by proponents of slavery to help prove that “Negroes” were inferior and separate.