174 COLOUR OF THE 



much avidity as any other bait, and in sharks there have 

 often been found ballast-stones, marling-spikes, hatchets, 

 and similar articles. Besides, owing to the sameness of 

 their food, and consequently, the little necessity of dis- 

 crimination, this sense was obviously not required. 

 But we must conclude our account of the senses, with 

 the last and most general of all, that o( Touch. 



Emily. This sense makes us acquainted with a great 

 variety of the physical properties of bodies, form, dimen- 

 sion, consistence, smoothness, motion, &tc. Its seat 

 seems to be as general as its powers being the whole 

 surface of the body. 



Dr. B. The sense of touch must not be confounded 

 with that of mere feeling which merely apprizes us of 

 the contact of foreign bodies, without giving us very 

 definite ideas of their qualities. However^ the former 

 seems to be only a more perfect kind of the latter, and 

 the seat of both is near the surface of the body within 

 its integuments. These integuments, included under 

 the general term of skin, are described by anatomists as 

 composed of several distinct strata or layers, different in 

 appearance and name. The most internal, that which 

 constitutes the chief bulk of the skin, is called the Der- 

 mis, or true skin. It is strong and compact in its texture 

 and chiefly composed of countless myriads of minute- 

 arteries, veins, nerves, &c. which traverse it in every 

 direction. From the nerves which are distributed over 

 every point of its surface, it receives that acute and del- 

 icate sensibility which renders it preeminently fitted to 

 be the organ of touch and feeling. Its colour is very 

 nearly the same in all the varieties of the race, and de- 

 pends entirely on the state of the minute blood-vessels.. 

 *' According as they are full or empty, it may vary (as 

 we see it in the white races) from a more or less florid 

 red, constituting what artists call flesh-colour, to the waxy 

 of fainting, or exhaustion frona hemorrhage,.'- 



