On the Aborigines of Brazil, 7 



rounded off.* The colour of the skin is more or less red- 

 dish like burnished copper,f varying according to the age, the 

 occupation, state of health, and race of the individual. New- 

 born children are almost white, or yellowish-white, like 

 Mulattos ; people when they are sick, have a brownish yel- 

 low colour. On the whole they are darker, the stronger and 

 more active they are. The sun and the smoke of their huts 

 may also contribute to make the skin a little darker. But 

 such shades, depending on transient causes, are not perma- 

 nent. On the inside of the flexures of the joints, the skin 

 is lighter. The wild Indian can hardly be said to blush from 

 shame, though he blushes from indignation. In fine, his 

 skin is delicate, soft, shining, and, when exposed to the sun, 

 much disposed to sweat; the sweat has a peculiar urino- 

 scabiose smell,J but is not so rank as that of the negro.§ 



* The following remarks on the skin apply pretty generally to the natives of 

 India, save as to the shade of colour.— TV. 



f I can give no better designation for the colour of the American than this, yet 

 it varies in shade from a brownish -yellow even to a light-white, almost equalling 

 the tint of the European. The young cells and cell-granules of the inner layer of 

 the epidermis lying on the cutis, according as they contain more or less pigment, 

 determine the colour of the skin. This layer is known by the name of the rete 

 Malpighii. In the white races of men, this granular coloured layer is only to be 

 plainly observed in particular spots, for instance the nipples, but it is more clearly 

 recognisable in all parts of the body in Americans and negroes. Yet even the 

 existence of this layer in Europeans is still a matter of dispute among anatomists. 

 Flourens maintains that the skin of the American, as well as that of the negro and 

 Mulatto, is differently constituted from that of the European; for he attributes to 

 those races a fine pigmentary apparatus of two layers between the cutis and the 

 two layers of the epidermis (which is wanting in the European.) German anatomists 

 do not assume any such complexity, and consider the pigment-layers, the product 

 of the papilla? of the cutis, as only a part of the inner, younger, and not yet firm 

 layer of the epidermis, distinguished by a greater deposit of pigment. [General rea- 

 sons are against M. Flourens' doctrine: for in the infinite variety of shade in the 

 gradation from a coloured man to a white one, it is impossible to draw any line, 

 which should define where these two layers cease to exist. — Tr.] 



X Uririos-scabios : if such a combination be more intelligible to German than 

 to English readers, they must be a-head of us in the science of osphresiology, to use 

 another hard word.— Tr, 



§ Von Martius is silent on the subject of albinism, which is described as being 

 very rare in Brazil, though so common among the Indians of the Isthmus of Darien. 

 It is common enough in Bengal. The writer has casually observed three albinoes, 

 all in different families, and residing in his immediate neighbourhood. — Tr. 



