AN ACCOUNT OF, &c. 431 



woman's own report, there is no difference in 

 their strength or feelings of any kind. 



The last circumstance which I shall mention 

 concerning her is, that no change has taken 

 place within her remembrance, either in the 

 degree or extent of the blackness of her skin. 



Two inferences may, I think, be made from 

 what has been related respecting Hannah West. 



The first is, that the blackness of the skin in 

 negroes is no proof of their forming a different 

 species of men from the white race. 



When a white man is much exposed to the 

 action of the sun, his skin becomes more or less 

 brown, and as the intensity of this colour, after 

 equal degrees of exposure, is generally propor- 

 tional to the heat of the climate, it has hence 

 been supposed, that the colour of negroes is 

 derived from a very great degree of the same 

 cause. But this conclusion seems to me very 

 faulty. For, setting aside that a white man, 

 rendered brown by the sun's rays, begets as 

 white children as those of another of the same 

 race, the colour of whose skin had never been 

 altered, it appears to me probable, from ob- 

 servations lately made on two negroes, that the 

 action of the sun tends rather to diminish than 

 augment the colour of their race. Both of 

 those persons were born in European settle- 

 ments, and had been accustomed to have their 



