VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



the hair also is variegated ; with the cream-white skin of the 

 albino,* we find hair of a peculiar yellowish white tint ; and, 

 where the skin is marked by reddish freckles, the hair is red. 

 When the hair is light, the iris is usually blue ; when dark, it is 

 of a brownish black ; if the hair loses the light shade of infancy, 

 the iris likewise grows darker, and when the hair turns grey in 

 advanced life, the iris loses much of its former colour ; the 

 albino has no more colouring matter in his chorioid or iris than 

 in his skin, and they therefore allow the redness of their blood 

 to appear, the latter being of a pak- rose colour and semi-pel- 

 lucid, the former, from its greater vascularity, causing the pupil 

 to be intensely red ; those animals only whose skin is subject to 

 varieties, vary in the colour of the iris ; and if the hair and skin 

 happen to be variegated, the iris is observed likewise variegated. f 



* Albinos spring tip among: all races of men ; and they cannnot be accounted 

 for, except when descended from albinos, for this variety of body may be 

 hereditary no less than it is connate and irremediable. It is known to he com- 

 mon to some mammalia and birds, but has never been observed by Blumenbach 

 in cold blooded animals. (1. c. 78.) A white rabbit is an instance of an albino. 

 The absence of the pigmeiUum nigrum renders the eyes extremely sensible to 

 light, whence such persons prefer going out in the evening. In Wafer's well 

 known and amusing account of those lie found in the isthmus of Darien, 

 he says, " They see not well in the sun, poring in the clearest day ; their 

 eyes being weak; and running with water if the sun shine towards them; 

 so that in the day time they care not to go abroad, unless it be a cloudy 

 dark day. Besides they are a weak people in comparison of the others, and 

 not very fit for hunting and other laborious exercises, nor do they delight in 

 such, hut notwithstanding their being thus sluggish and dull in the day time, 

 yet when moonshiny nights come, they are all life and activity, running abroad 

 and into the woods, skipping about like wild bucks ; and turning as fast by moon- 

 light, even in the gloom and shade- of the woods, as the other Indians by day, 

 being as nimble as they, though not .so strong and lusty." Dampicr's Voyages. 



f The hair is frequently of different shades in different parts. 



John Hunter remarked that the iris in animals agrees principally with the 

 colour of the eyelashes. 



However various the colour of the hair in horses, the iris, he also ob- 

 serves, is always of the same. But then the hair is always of the same at birth, 

 and the skin docs not participate in its subsequent changes, being as dark in 

 white as in black horses. In cream-coloured horses, indeed, there is an excep- 



