H. S. Stannus 
363 
certainly must differ from him and agree with Dr Pooley, also quoted, when he 
says that " in newborn babies (negroes) the skin being thinner, the pink of the 
blood vessels is much more clearly seen, but the skin has an ashy grey colour all 
the same, the black is there all the time " — a phenomenon which is clearly seen 
in the still-born and premature births. I do not hesitate to say that a portion of 
skin of the new-born native of this country could be immediately distinguished 
from a portion derived from a new-born European child. To give an example, the 
infant of Private Jurnbe, 1st K. A. R., seen immediately after birth, had a skin 
colour of a pinkish white with a dark cafe-au-lait tint about it, not the dead 
white as seen in other young albino children; hair of head rather straight and a 
dark brown in colour, body and limbs covered with very light fine hair of the 
lanugo type ; irides a liquid steel blue. Darkening of the skin occurred rajjidly ; 
it was not noticeably light after three weeks, and in three months it was an 
ordinary " dark " coloured baby. 
Specimens of hair from the head and body having the colour as above 
mentioned were taken a few days after birth. The hair from the scalp was 
seen to contain bright yellow diffused pigment, and a fair amount of brown 
granular pigment. The body hairs were very fine and undeveloped, and very 
fine granular pigment was present. 
The pigmentation, then, of the skin (irides and hair) of the native of Central 
Africa is a progressive process ; normally pigmentation is quite marked at birth 
and thereafter proceeds rapidly, but in a large number does not reach, so to speak, 
completion till the age of possibly 16 years. This I have noticed with three or 
four of my younger servants who during the six years they have been with me 
have darkened very materially. 
This production of pigment as the result of metabolism in certain cells might 
be likened to the production of the salivary ferments by the salivary glands. The 
cells are there in the skin ready for their work in the foetus just as the cells of the 
salivary glands are, but the latter do not begin to produce their ferments till they 
are needed (for the digestion of certain foodstuffs) ; in the same way the skin of 
the young foetus is unpigmented, and it is only when pigment is about to be 
needed that it is formed. During the few days after birth there is a call for its 
rapid formation and it is produced. 
The stimulus for this rapid formation is probably light rays or ultra-spectral 
rays acting indirectly by means of a ferment, though, now that pigmentation is a 
racial characteristic, the tendency for the process to start and go on is represented 
in the germ-plasm of the parents. This inherent tendency to produce pigment is 
borne out by the fact that the latter was present in the hairs removed from a 
dermoid cyst (vide supra). 
That depth of pigmentation is conserved as the result of such a physical cause 
as light I have no doubt, as the following observation will serve to show. I held 
a medical inspection of the 1st Battalion of the King's African Rifles the day after 
