' 
OR, A TREATISE ON PILE. 8&9 
extremity, and that it is the same with the lower animals. (Elem. Phys. and Anat., 
p- 330.) 
We have, in our collection, a bristle of a Russian Hog, which is black at the posterior 
extremity for 2 inches and ;’,ths. and white for the remainder of the shaft, say 9 inches 
and -*ths. We have another that is tri-colored, viz: black, white and corneous colored. 
10 
There are, connected with this subject of the coloring matter of pile, several interesting 
questions, as Ist. Of the nature of the coloring matter. Of this we have disposed in the 
second Chapter, to which we refer. 2d. Of the seat of the coloring matter. ‘This we have 
shown is, in a perfect hair, in a central canal; im an imperfect one, the coloring matter is 
sometimes confined to the cortex, and at others it is extended to the intermediate fibres. 
‘This distinction may have been before hinted, but has never been insisted on as an 
important specific difference, as it certainly is. 3d. Is the coloring matter of the skin and 
that of the hair identical? 'There are some writers, of high repute, who advocate the 
affirmative side of this question. (See Dict. of Sci. Med., v. 43, p. 170.) And there are 
others who even contend that the co'oring matter of the skin is secreted zz the bulbs 
[follicles] of the hair. Gaultier says that, upon removing the coloring matter of a negro’s 
skin, with a blister, he saw it proceeding from the hair bulbs, one portion radiating until 
it met that of another hair bulb; and, finally, the whole surface becoming black. 
To this theory of “the skin of a negro being furnished with coloring matter from the 
bulbs [follicles] of his wool,” there are two objections, which appear to be unanswerable, 
viz: Ist. That the color of the negro’s skin* continues to be black, after his wool has 
become grey [white] for want of the coloring matter. 2d. That persons with black hair 
have white skins, and no appearance of a black colored rete mucosum. 
It is true that Bichat says that it has been frequently observed, that the red color of the 
hair accords with the spots of the same color found upon the skin of individuals. (See 
Anat. Gen., v. 2, p. 789.) But we answer that they are not a/ways so found to agree, for 
we have in our collection specimens of the hair of Braddock Howard, who was exhibited 
in Philadelphia in the winter of 1848-9, the whole of whose face, except a small seam 
upon his forehead, which has the appearance of a scar, is of a wwd purple; and this color, 
though not quite of so deep a hue, is traceable to the skin of his head, yet his hair is dark 
brown, fine and silky. 
So Dr. Emery Bissell mentions the case of a very dark colored Tidian, who gradually 
turned white after he had passed the age of sixty, the color of his pile undergoing no 
change other than that incident to old age. And in the Museum of Nat. Hist. of Paris is 
the portrait of a pie-bald negro, whose skin, in the changed part, is pale rose color, and 
whose wool is colorless. 
Or THE Rete Mucosum.—In regard to the experiments on the negro’s skin and wool, 
through the agency of a blister, Cruikshank says, that when a blister is applied to the 
* We are speaking of the black persons seen in all our country who are generally denominated negroes, but which we pre- 
sume to be very far from being pwre negroes; and Gaultier, most probably, performed his experiment upon this kind 
of person. 
