THE GEOGRAPHICAL SKIN. 271 



and by the cuticle to the tip of every hair; it runs along each per- 

 spiratory gland and oil gland, through the eight-and-twenty miles of 

 our ingenious surveyor ; and next through every pore of every sieve- 

 like blood-vessel along the sanguineous system, and along the lym- 

 phatic system ; over levels which no anatomical quadrant has taken, 

 and through a mileage which wants another surveyor still ; in short 

 it ranges through brain and body wherever anything touches any- 

 thing, and where consequently a sense of touch and a skin are indis- 

 pensable.* 



So much for the altitude of the skin, or its penetrancy body-deep, 

 and its rise brain-high. But the surface of the organic miracle, its 

 means of display, are not less remarkable. The plummet line that 

 finds no soundings is matched in the lines of sight, which meet a 

 constant horizon, but never a shore. Awe stands giddy over the 

 chasms of the soul ; amazement heaving with joy, finds and loses 

 itself moment by moment, at the prospect of the landscapes of the 

 never-ending life. The skin is as broad as it is high. 



The geographical or regional consideration of the skin, to which 

 we are now pointing, is capable of being pursued in different ways. 

 It may be followed literally, and the diversities of skin traced in 

 nations and races in different parts of the globe -, looking on the 

 earth itself as clothed with men as with a coat of many colors. Or 

 it may be traced over the individual body, where it exhibits a scale 

 of varieties, minute indeed, but apparently as exhaustless as in 

 humanity itself. Let us briefly advert to each of these depart- 

 ments. 



In all races of mankind the corium or true skin is white ; the 

 difference of hue residing in the other layers. Blumenbach reckons 

 five general varieties of color ; the white or Caucasian ; the yellow 



* The presence of skin in the body is the double of the presence of feeling, 

 which is skin-function, in the mind ; and as feeling is cointensive with life, skin 

 is coextensive with bodily structure. Feeling however subsists in different 

 powers and degrees so dissimilar to each other, that no boldness short of com- 

 mon sense dare call by the same general word the sentiment of duty, or love, 

 and the sense of wamth, or resistance ; all of which, however, are rightly de- 

 signated feelings. It requires the same boldness, and no more, to denominate 

 the membranes of the pia mater by the name skin, which signifies the general 

 envelope of the frame. 



