27C VARIETIES IN THE HAIR, BEARt), 



pie ; tluit he could not ascertain whether the deficiency ob- 

 served in the others arose from natural defect, or from the 

 beard beini^ plucked out. 



The genuine negroes have very little growth of hair on 

 the chin *, or on other parts of the body. In a full-grown 

 lad of seventeen, there was not the smallest appearance of 

 beard, nor of hair on any other part except the head. I 

 never saw any hair on the arms, legs, or breasts of Negroes, 

 like what is observed on those parts in Europeans. 



Although the South-Sea Islanders come under the dark- 

 coloured division of the human race, they are not at all 

 deficient in beard. The descriptions and figures of Cook 

 concur in assigning to them, in many cases, a copious 

 growth f. 



That a similar connexion in point of colour to that which 

 I have just explained between the skin and the hair, exists 

 also between the former organ and the eyes, was noticed by 

 Aristotle, who observed that white persons have blue, and 

 dark ones black eyes. Thus, in European countries, newly- 

 born children have generally light eyes and hair, and both 

 grow gradually darker together in individuals of dark com- 

 plexion. Again, in proportion as the hair turns gray In the 

 old subject, the pigmentum of the eye loses much of Its 

 brown colour J. With the colourless skin and hair of the 



» De Bry states of the Con^o Negroes '' Barbae parum hiibent ; videas 

 eniin trigesimum a»tatisageiites annum, qiiornm genas vix lanugo vcstire ccepit 

 tenerrima." 



f The portrait of Potatow, an Otaheitean chief has beard enough for a 

 Jewish Rabbi. Voyage towards the S. Pole, v. i/ p. 159, pi. 5G, New Zea- 

 lander, v. ii. p. 152. pi, 55. See also the portrait of Tiarraii a New Zea- 

 land chief, prefixed to Savage's Account of New Zealand. The representa- 

 tions of the Tannese, Mallicollese, and New Caledonians have been already 

 quoted ; note +, p. 272, Man of Mangeea ; folio atlas to the Voyage to the 

 Pacific, p! . II. 



f Pigmentum nigrum is an incorrect expression as applied to the human eye, 

 in which the matter in question, whether in the choroid membrane or on the 

 uvea, is always brown. It is neither black, nor of a tint that could be mis- 

 taken for it, even in the darkest races ; although it is of a deep black in our 

 common quadrupeds. 



