j^riscellanies in Natural History. 73 



tnity, which first made Its appearance seven or eight weeks 

 after birth, at which period the skin became yellow, and 

 gradually continued to grow darker, till at length it became 

 black, and soon after thicker and more corneous. 



In his fiftieth jeur this man, who was now married and a 

 father, exhibited himself in London, together with his son, 

 who had the same deformity of skin. The celebrated 

 Baker, who wrote on the inicroscope, gave at that time 

 in the Philosophical Transactions* an appendix to M. 

 Machin's paper ; and as the latter had given a representa- 

 tion of the hand of the father, the former gave a figure of 

 that of the son from a drawing, an engraving of which may 

 be seen also in Edwards's Gleanings of Natural History, 

 p. 1, tab. 215. 



This son afterwards married ; and in the month of Sep- 

 tember 1801 I saw two of his sons perfectly like their fa- 

 ther and grandfather, and consequently the third genera- 

 tion of this family so singular on account of this cuticular 

 deformity. 



The oldest was twenty-two years of age and married, the 

 vounger was fourteen. Roth were stout, well made, and of 

 an athletic constitution. The older was a good pugilist like 

 his grandfather, who is said to have excelled in this gymnastic 

 art. His face, the palms of the hands, and the soles of the 

 feet were of the usual appearance, but seemed to me to be 

 uncommonly red. The skin of the remaining parts of the 

 body was covered with corneous excrescences, or pegs of 

 greater or less size, and of a more or less horny nature. 

 The longest, strongest, and hardest, were on the fore arm 

 and thighs ; the finest were on some parts of the lower 

 bellv. They were in general smaller on the younger bro- 

 ther, and in many places, such as the breast, soft. The 

 largest excrescences were from four to five lines in length, 

 and of an irregular prismatic form, \\'\l\\ blunt edges, al- 

 most as if pressed flat. The thickest were about three lines 

 in diameter; at the extremities in general split, and many 

 of thein diverging like a fork. On the other hand, I 

 scarcely observed one of them of that cyiindric form ascri- 

 bed to them by Baker, wlio besides supposed them to be 

 hollow ; at least such was the opinion of Hallcr, who con- 

 sidered this as a eoniinnatitni of Boerhaavc's opinion in re- 

 gard to the construction of the epidermis, as he says : " In 

 hoc puero tota superficies corporis abiit in eongenem tubu- 

 loruni exstantiuin, callosorum, submde rcnasccntium, quod 



* Vn!. xlix. part i. p. ii. 



ccrt>5 



