68 DISEASES CLASS I. 2. 2, 11, 



in contact with the fore part of the neck and breast; the tail is 

 applied close against the division of the thighs behind; the inside 

 of the hinder thighs are pressed close to the sides of the belly, all 

 these parts have white hairs. 



The fore-legs in the uterus lie on each side of the face; so 

 that the feet cover part of the temples, and compress the promi- 

 nent part of the upper eye-brows, but are so placed as to defend 

 the eye-balls from pressure; it is curious to observe, that the hair 

 of the sides of the face, and of the prominent upper eye-brows, 

 are tawny, and of the inside of the feet and legs, which covered 

 them; for as this posture admitted of more change in the latter 

 weeks of gestation, the colour of these parts is not so far re- 

 moved from black, as of those parts, where the contact or com- 

 pression was more uniform. 



I have lately also inspected a male cat; who is quite black all 

 over, except those parts which appear to have been folded toge- 

 ther in the uterus; all which are perfectly white. In both these 

 animals the parts compressed together are so distinctly defined 

 by their colour, that the difference of the curvature and situation 

 of them in the uterus may be nicely discerned: the hinder feet 

 of the cat lay in the arm-pits of the fore-legs, and are white; 

 her fore-legs crossed over the hinder thighs, and left on them a 

 white mark; but the fore-feet, at least the hind part of them, 

 lay under the tail; whence the fore-feet are tipped with white. 

 Where the foetus is less tender, I suppose, this compression in 

 the uterus does not affect it; as dogs and cats are perpetually 

 seen, which are totally black. 



Where this uterine compression of parts has not been so great 

 as to render the hair white in other animals, it frequently hap- 

 pens, that the extremities of the body are white, as the feet, 

 and nose, and tips of the ears of dogs and cats and horses, where 

 the circulation is naturally weaker; whence it would seem, that 

 the capillary glands, which form the hair, are impeded in the 

 first instance by compression, and in the last by the debility of 

 the circulation in them. See Class I. 1. 2. 15. 



This day, August 8th, 1794, I have seen a negro, who was 

 born (as he reports) of black parents, both father and mother, at 

 Kingston in Jamaica, who has many large white blotches on the 

 skin of his limbs and body; which I thought felt not so soft to 

 the finger, as the black parts. He has a white divergent blaze 

 from the summit of his nose to the vertex of his head; the upper 

 part of which, where it extends on the hairy scalp, has thick 

 curled hair, like the other part of his head, but quite white. By 

 these marks I supposed him to be the same black, who is describ- 

 ed, when only two years old ? in the Transactions of the Ameri- 



