74 INTRODUCTION. 



The color of the human skin is not regarded as of to much impor- 

 tance as it formerly was ; though no sufficient reasons are given. In 

 every animal but man, color, when transmitted from generation to 

 generation unchanged, is considered of specific value. It is said, 

 though without any facts to sustain it, that climate insensibly pro- 

 duces the change of color with other physical changes. If climate 

 can change a white into a black man, producing what we claim gen- 

 erally as a specific distinction, what difference does it imply to admit 

 the general doctrine of Lamarck " that the vast variety of organisms 

 were produced by the operation of laws, by development, and not by 

 direct creation?'' There is no reason why we should not insist on 

 the specific value of color in man, at least to the same extent as we 

 admit it in animals. Says Van Amringe, " The moralqnestion of uni- 

 versal brotherhood and its consequent obligations is not affected by 

 making the permanent differences, acknowledged by all to prevail in 

 the different races of mankind, to owe their origin either to the 

 direct or indirect agency of our common creation." 



M. Flourens considers the color of the skin more characteristic of 

 distinctness of species than any other peculiarity ; but, though we 

 may accept his conclusions, (for reasons which will hereafter appear,) 

 he probably labored under an error in assuming the existence of a 

 peculiar membrane in the Negro skin, which is entirely wanting in 

 the white races.* Allowing, with Ilenle and Simon, that the skin 

 is not composed of continuous membranes, but of layers of cells ; of 

 epidermic cells, among which are interspersed the pigment cells on 

 which the color of the skin, hair, and eyes, depends; the fact that 

 the microscope was necessary to discover the rete Malpighii in the 

 white races, while " in the dark races it has long been known, and 

 is easily discoverable, and separable by maceration, without a micro- 

 scope, and that it increases in thickness in the descending series of 

 species, until, in some Negroes, it is thicker than the cuticle," is 

 sufficient to show that the functions of a skin, so differently pro- 

 portioned in the various races, may be considered specifically adapted 

 to the circumstances under which the several varieties of man were 

 formed to live. 



Microscopic examination has proved that the hair of the Negro is 



* " The uniform color," says Lawrence, " of all parts of the body is a 

 strong argument against those who ascribe the blackness of the Negic to 

 the same cause as that which produces tanning in white people ; namely, 

 the sun"s rays. Neither is the peculiar color of the Negro confined to the 

 skin ; a small circle of the conjunctiva, round the cornea, is blackish, and 

 the rest of the membrane has a yellowish brown tinge." 



