126 LECTURE V. 



greatest cleanliness. These ethnic odours must not be con- 

 founded with such as are evidently the result of alimentation, 

 and which vary in the same races. An Itahan or Provencal, 

 eating garlic, onions, and celery will, no doubt, emit an odour 

 different from the Norwegian or Icelander who lives on fish, 

 blubber, and rancid butter ; still, the odour may be removed by 

 a different mode of life. It is not so with the specific odour of 

 the negro, which persists, wash or feed the negro as you like. 

 It resembles entirely the odour of the musk-animal, and de- 

 pends upon the peculiar secretion of the sudorific glands, 

 which, however, in their structure, are similarly arranged as 

 in other races, though they are larger and more numerous. 



The comparative anatomy of races has, certainly, hitherto 

 not thrown much light upon skin pecuHarities, such as the 

 peculiar velvety texture of the skin of the negro. This may, 

 perhaps, result from the larger number of sudorific and seba- 

 ceous glands, and partly from the greater development and 

 length of the papillae. 



Abnormal shades of colour, such as are seen in albinos, afibrd 

 very little explanation. In exceptional cases, the pigment 

 peculiar to the race is absent in some individuals belonging to 

 it. Such conditions may, no doubt, be transmitted, though it 

 frequently occurs that the young relapse into the colour of the 

 original stock. Though, by inbreeding of such white indivi- 

 duals as mice and rabbits, and by careful exclusion of indivi- 

 duals relapsing to the primitive colour, a permanent variety 

 may be formed in which the pigment is absent, we must not 

 forget that Albinos occur in every race ; and Negro- Albinos 

 do not in the least resemble the Caucasian, but only the Cau- 

 casian-Albino, and him only, as regards colour, and in nothing 

 else. A morbid condition, long known to Europeans before it 

 was observed in other races, cannot possibly establish a transi- 

 tion from one race into another. 



The HAIR fully deserves all the attention it has received, 

 some authors, indeed, having made it the basis of a classifica- 

 tion of mankind. Thus I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire assumes two 

 principal groups of mankind. The straight-haired (Leiotrichi), 

 including the white, yellow, brown, and red races ; and woolly- 



