60 MAMMALIA—MAN. 
have very little of the rose in them. The iris and pupil of his eyes are of a 
bright rose-red color, reflecting in some situations an opaline tinge. He 
cannot endure the strong light of the sun. When desired to look up, his 
eyelids are in constant motion, and he is incapable cf fixing the eye steadily 
on any object, as is observed in those laboring under some kind of slight 
ophthalmia, but in him is unaccompanied by tears. His mother says, that 
his tears never flow in the coldest weather ; but when vexed they are shed 
abundantly. The white of the eye is generally bloodshot. He says he sees 
better by candle than by daylight; especially at present, when the reflection 
from the snow on the ground is extremely offensive to him. He goes to 
school, but generally retires to the darkest part of it to read his lesson, 
because this is rnost agreeable to his eyes. In my room, which has a 
northern aspect, he can only distinguish some of the letters in the pages 
of the Edinburgh Review; but, if the light is not permitted to fall full on 
the book, he is able to read most of them. He holds the book very near his 
eye. His disposition is very gentle; he is not deficient in intellect.” 
Among the sports of nature, with respect to the human race, not one 
of the least singular was the porcupine Man. He was born in the county 
of Suffolk, England, in 1710. The skin of his body was covered with ex- 
crescences like thorns, or prickles, and about the thickness of a packthread. 
His face, the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet, were the only 
parts which were free from these singular warts. “They were of a reddish 
brown, and had such a degree of hardness and elasticity, as to rattle when 
the hand was moved over the body. They were half an inch long in some 
parts, and were shorter in others. They did not appear till two months 
after his birth; but, what is most extraordinary, they dropped off every 
winter, and were renewed in the spring. In other respects the man enjoy- 
ed a good state of health. He had six children, al! of whom, like their 
father, were covered with these excrescences. 
Among these varieties of nature in the human species, we may reckon 
dwarfs and giants. Deceived by some optical illusion, the ancient histo- — 
rians gravely mention whole nations of pigmies, as existing in remote 
quarters of the world. The more accurate observations of the moderns, 
however, convince us that these accounts are entirely fabulous. 
The existence, therefore, of a pigmy race of mankind, being founded in 
error or in fable, we can expect to find men of diminutive stature only by 
accident, among men of the ordinary size. Of these accidental dwarfs, 
every country, and almost every village, can produce numerous instances: 
there was a time when these unfavored children of nature were the peculiar 
favorites of the great; and no prince, or nobleman, thought himself com- 
pletely attended, unless he had a dwarf among the number of his domestics. 
These poor little men were kept to be laughed at, or to raise the barbarous 
pleasure of their masters, by their contrasted inferiority. Even in England, 
as Jate as the time of King James the First, the court was at one time 
