IN THE HUMAN SPECIES. 263 



variety being produced by the cohabitation of a Negro with 

 an Albiness, is groundless. 



These spots, in which the epidermis is perfectly healthy, 

 and which are distinguisliable from the rest of the skin only 

 by their whiteness, are not to be confounded with diseases 

 of the organ, where the cuticle becomes scaly or branny, 

 which are frequent in some of the black races. Nor are 

 they peculiar to dark-coloured people. Blumenbach has 

 seen two instances in Germans ; one of a youth, the other 

 of a man sixty years old. They both had a rather tawny 

 skin, marked here and there with various-sized spots of the 

 clearest white. They appeared first in the former in infancy, 

 and in the latter at the age of manhood. 



The skin differs in some other properties besides its co- 

 lour. Travellers have described it as remarkably soft and 

 smooth, and, as it were, silky in certain races : as in the 

 Carib, Negro *, Otaheitean f, and Turk. It secretes a 

 matter of peculiar odour in some races. " The Peruvian 

 Indians," says Humboldt, " who in the middle of the night 

 distinguish the different races by their quick sense of smell, 

 have formed three words to express the odour of the Euro- 

 pean, the Indian American, and the Negro : they call the 

 first pezuna, the second poseo, and the third graio J." He 

 adds, that the casts of Indian or African blood preserve the 

 odour peculiar to the cutaneous transpiration of those pri- 

 mitive races. 



* '* Their skins are always cool, at least more so than those of Europeans 

 in the same climate ; and they are also remarkable for their sleekness and 

 velvet-like softness." Winterbottom, Account of the Native Africans ; 

 i. 180. 



+ Hawkesworth's Collection of Voyages ; i. ii. p. 187. 

 :}: Humboldt, Political Essay ; i. 245. 



