OF VARIETIES IN FORM. 387 



shewn in Germany, and had the cutaneous incrustation al- 

 ready described. A minute account of tliem was published 

 by Dr. W. G. Tilesius *, who mentions that the wife of 

 the elder, at the time he saw him, was in England pregnant. 



Let us suppose that the porcupine family had been exiled 

 from human society, and been obliged to take up their re- 

 sidence in some solitary spot or desert island. By matching 

 with each other, a race would have been produced, more 

 widely different from us in external appearance than tlie 

 Negro. If they had been discovered at some remote period, 

 our philosophers would have explained to us how the soil, 

 air, or climate, had produced so strange an organization ; or 

 would have demonstrated that they must have sprung from 

 an originally different race ; for who would acknowledge 

 such bristly beings for brothers ? 



The giants collected hy Frederic William I. for his 

 regiment of Guards produced a very tall race in the town 

 wdiere they were quartered: in the language of Dr. Johnson, 

 they " propagated procerity f." 



This resemblance of offspring to parents, in native pecu- 

 liarities of structure, prevails so extensively, that those mi- 

 nute, and in many cases imperceptible, differences of organi- 

 zation or vital properties, which render men disposed to 

 particular diseases, are conveyed from father to son for age 

 after age. This is matter of common notoriety with respect 

 to scrofula, consumption, gout, rheumatism, insanity, and 

 other affections of the head. There is more doubt in some 

 other cases, as hare lip, squinting, club-foot, hernia, aneu- 

 rism, cataract, fatuity, &c. ; of which, however, there are 



* Beschreibung und Abhildung der beiden sogenannten Stachelschweinmens- 

 chen ; Altenburg, fol. 1S02. with two plates, containing several figures. 



They are also described by Blumenbacb, in Voigt's Neues Magazin, v. iii. 

 part 4. 



f " The Guards of the late King Frederic William of Prussia, and like- 

 wise those of thepresent monarch, who are all of an uncommon size, have been 

 quartered at Potsdam for fifty years past. A great number of the present 

 inhabitants of that place are of very high stature, which is more especially 

 striking in the numerous gigantic figures of women." Fokstf.r's Observations 

 made on a Voyage round the World; p. 248-9. 



c c2 



