ORGANS OF GENERATION. 363 



many subjects, merely appearing as a projecting orifice, or 

 an elliptical tube of an inch or less in length. In the has- 

 taard (offspring of European father and Hottentot mother) 

 it ceases to appear *.'' He observes again, of the Namaa- 

 quas, that " they had the same conformation of certain 

 parts of the body as the Bosjesman women, and other Hot- 

 tentots; in a less degree, however, than is usual in the 

 former, and more so than in those of the latter f. 



This account is fully confirmed by the accurate descrip- 

 tions of Dr. SoMERViLLE J, who speaks from ample oppor- 

 tunities of observation and dissection. He states, that the 

 mons veneris is less prominent than in Europeans ; and 

 either destitute of hair, or thinly covered by a small quantity 

 of a soft woolly nature ; that the labia are very small, inso- 

 much that they seem sometimes to be almost deficient : that 

 the loose, pendulous, and rugous growth, which hangs from 

 the pudendum, is a double fold, and proved by the situation of 

 the clitoris, at the commissure of these folds, as well as by 

 all other circumstances, to be the nymphae ; and that they 

 descend in some cases five inches § below the margin of 

 the labia. 



The description, by Cuvier ||, of the individual exhibited 

 in London and Paris, under the name of the Hottentot 

 Venus, agrees entirely with Dr. Somerville's account. He 

 found the labia small ; a single prominence descended be- 

 tween them towards the upper part : it divided into two 

 lateral portions, which passed along the sides of the vagina 

 to the inferior angle of the labia. The whole length was 

 about four inches. 



This formation has often been ascribed to artificial elonga- 



* Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, p.28()— 1. + Ibid. 389. 



X Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, v. \n. p. 157. 



§ In one of Blumenbach's drawings, the length is 6| inches (Rhynland 

 measure). Vaillant speaks of their reaching 9 inches. 



11 3Iem. du Museum, t. iii. p. 266. 



When Peron visited the Cape of Good Hope, he turned his attention to 

 this subject; but his statements, as contained in the second volume of the 

 Voyage dcs Decouvertcs, &c. chap. 34, publitshed after his death, are quite 

 erroneous-. 



