60 MAMMALIA— MAN. 



have very little of the rose in them. The iris and pupil of his eyes are of a 

 bright rose-red color, reflecting in some situations an opaline tinge. He 

 cannot endure the strong light of the sun. When desired to look up, his 

 eyelids are in constant motion, and he is incapable of fixing the eye steadily 

 on any object, as is observed in those laboring under some kind of slight 

 ophthalmia, but in him is unaccompanied by tears. His mother says, that 

 his tears never flow in the coldest weather ; but when vexed they are shed 

 abundantly. The white of the eye is generally bloodshot. He says he sees 

 better by candle than by daylight ; especially at present, when the reflection 

 from the snow on the ground is extremely offensive to him. He goes to 

 school, but generally retires to the darkest part of it to read his lesson, 

 because this is most agreeable to his eyes. In my room, which has a 

 northern aspect, he can only distinguish some of the letters in the pages 

 of the Edinburgh Review ; but, if the light is not permitted to fall full on 

 the book, he is able to read most of them. He holds the book very near his 

 eye. His disposition is very gentle; he is not deficient in intellect." 



Among the sports of nature, with respect to the human race, not one 

 of the least singular was the forcupine man. He was born in the county 

 of Suffolk, England, in 1710. The skin of his body was covered with ex- 

 crescences like thorns, or prickles, and about the thickness of a packthread. 

 His face, the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet, were the only 

 parts which were free from these singular warts. They were of a reddish 

 brown, and had such a degree of hardness and elasticity, as to rattle when 

 the hand was moved over the body. They were half an inch long in some 

 parts, and were shorter in others. They did not appear till two months 

 after his birth ; but, what is most extraordinary, they dropped off every 

 winter, and were renewed in the spring. In other respects the man enjoy- 

 ed a good state of health. He had six children, all of whom, like their 

 father, were covered with these excrescences. 



Among these varieties of nature in the human species, we may reckon 

 dwarfs and giants. Deceived by some optical illusion, the ancient histo- 

 rians gravely mention whole nations of pigmies, as existing in remote 

 quarters of the world. The more accurate observations of the moderns, 

 however, convince us that these accounts are entirely fabulous. 



The existence, therefore, of a pigmy race of mankind, being founded in 

 error or in fable, we can expect to find men of diminutive stature only by 

 accident, among men of the ordinary size. Of these accidental dwarfs, 

 every country, and almost every village, can produce numerous instances: 

 there Was a time when these unfavored children of nature were the peculiar 

 favorites of the great ; and no prince, or nobleman, thought himself com- 

 pletely attended, unless he had a dwarf among the number of his domestics. 

 These poor little men were kept to be laughed at, or to raise the barbarous 

 pleasure of their masters, by their contrasted inferiority. Even in England, 

 as late as the time of King James the First, the court was at one time 



