OR, A TREATISE ON PILE. 83 



2 ft 

 "90 



With 670 grains it stretched || of an inch, minus 



" >7On " '< 4A " " 2i 



' ^ ~9 0~ 90 



<' *)"7n " " 48 " ". " 



*" "ij 9 It" 



" fiOn " " 6<X " " S3. 



~ **\) u [) y 



" 870 it broke. 



Fracture, bushy ; button, sheath and follicle, have none to examine; shaft, uneven, 

 bulged, flattened and sunken; cortex, striated, strise, numerous and confused; intermediate 

 fibres, white, lustrous, diameter of one of the smallest -$-$- of an inch; centre, a cnnal 

 enclosing coloring matter which is white with a slight tinge of yellow ; interrupted 

 diameters, yg 3 ^ of an inch ; when the cortex and intermediate fibres are artificially made 

 transparent, the coloring matter is seen in plumbeous masses of spires or threads ; diame- 

 ter of the masses, ^-gVo" f an inch, the threads too minute for measurement ; apex, very 

 pointed ; disks, plumbeous colored with a minute light colored speck in the centre. 



Albinos were, until lately, so little known in Europe, that Goldsmith describes two that 

 he saw in London as "white negroes." He says he found the color to be exactly like an 

 European, the visage white and ruddy, and the lips of a proper redness; but that there 

 were sufficient marks to convince him of its descent. The hair was white and woolly, and 

 very unlike any thing he had before seen. The iris of the eye was yellow, inclining to 

 red ; the nose was flat, exactly resembling that of a negro ; and the lips thick and promi- 

 nent. No doubt therefore remained of the child having been born of negro parents ; and 

 the person who showed it had attestations to convince the most incredulous. 



Whether any among the American Indians? We have no pile of an American Indian 

 Albino, but notice that Wafer states, that he saw many of them among the native Ameri- 

 can Indians of the Isthmus of Darien. He says that they are not a distinct race, but they 

 are descended from their copper-colored Indian parents. And in.Latham, Nat. Hist, of the 

 Varieties of Man, p. 395, it is said that many of the Luni Indians, of California, are Albinos ; 

 which he thinks is probably the origin of the report that there is a race of white Indians 

 in that quarter. 



Martin, (in Hist, of Man, p. 166,) says that Albinos appear among all nations; they 

 occur among the fairest of Europe and the darkest of Africa, in Java, Ceylon and the 

 Continent of India. Captain Cook saw them in Tahiti, and Winterbottom mentions hav- 

 ing seen them at Sierre Leone and the neighboring parts of the African Coast.* 



Mr. Jefferson,! mentioned four cases of Albinos known to himself, and three others of 

 whom he was informed, all of them descended from negro parents with no mixture of 

 white blood. There are also Albinos among the lower animals. This pile it is our inten- 

 tion to examine and describe at some future day. 



Inferences from Examinations. It appears from the foregoing examinations : 1st. That 



* Albinism is believed to bo more frequent in the wooly-haired races of man ; but in the sandy plains of the North-West 

 of Europe, the same appearances occur, though not quite with the marks of disease ; it is mere absence of coloring matter in 

 the system. Among Mongolia nations it is unknown, or very rare, and it is equally so with the aboriginal tribes of America. 

 (Smith's Nat. Hist, of the Human Species, 100.) 



t Notes on Virginia, 159. 



21 



