364 VARIHTIKS OF FIGURE. 



tion. " The testimony of the people themselves/' says 

 Mr. Barro^y, " who have no other idea than that the 

 whole human race is so formed, is sufficient to contradict 

 such a supposition ; but many other proofs might be ad- 

 duced to shew that the assertion is without any foundation 

 in truth. Numbers of Bosjesman women are now in the 

 colony, who were taken from their mothers when infants, 

 and brought up by the farmers, who, from the day of their 

 captivity, never had any intercourse whatsoever with their 

 countrymen, nor knew, except from report, to what tribe 

 or nation they belong ; yet all these have the same confor- 

 mation of the parts naturally, and without any forced 

 means ■^. 



Dr. SoMERViLLE observcs, that if any practice of elonga- 

 ting the nymphge had existed among the Hottentots, it 

 could not have escaped his knowledge ; that they do not 

 wn'sh to have them long, nor take any pains for that purpose. 

 They who have them longest are not thought the more beau- 

 tiful ; nor are those slighted in whom they are short f. 



This extension of the nymphse in the Bosjesman and 

 Hottentot females will appear the less remarkable, when we 

 consider that their size varies in Europeans ; that they often 

 project beyond the labia, and are of an inconvenient length. 

 A considerable developement of these organs is more com- 

 mon in warm climates ; and has been noticed in the Ne- 

 groes, Moors, and Copts, among whom it has been the 

 practice for females to be circumcised J. This point is even 



* Travels, &c. p. 279, 280. 



+ Lib.cit. p. 158. 



X In the Appendix, No. 1. entitled " An Account of Circumcision as it is 

 practised on the windward Coast of Africa/' to the second volume of his 

 very interesting Account of the Native Africans, Dr. Winterbotto:iI in- 

 forms us, that this operation is performed on the females as well as the m:iles, 

 and that it is equally common to both sexes in many parts of Arabia ; at Bag- 

 dad, Aleppo, and Surat, in Egypt, Abyssinia, and the neighbouring countries. 

 " Among tiie INIahommedan Nations on this part of the coast (Sierra Leone), 

 the operation consists in removing the nymphae, together with the prseputium 

 clitoridis ; not the clitoris itself, as has been imagined." p. 239. Brlce, who 

 gives a similar account of the circumcision, or, as he calls it, excision, prac' 

 tiscd in Abyssinia, refers the origin of the custom to a natural redundancy, or 



