114 
ALBINOS. 
vided with this black mucus, and were therefore more sensible to the 
action of light. This sensibility of blue eyes agrees very well, says 
M. Blumenbach, with northern people, during their long twilight ; 
while, on the contrary, the deep black in the eyes of negroes enables 
them to support the splendour of the sun’s beams in the torrid zone. 
As to the connexion between this red colour of the eyes and the 
whiteness of the skin and hair, the same learned physician says that it 
is owing to a similiarity of structure — consenses ex similitudin efabricae. 
He asserts, that this black mucus is formed only in the delicate cellu- 
lar substance, w hich has numerous blood-vessels contiguous to it, but 
contains no fat, like the inside of the eye, the skin of negroes, the 
spotted palate of several domestic animals, &c. And, lastly, he says, 
that the colour of the hair generally corresponds with that of the iris.” 
At the very time that M. Blumenbach was reading this memoir to 
the Royal Society of Gottingen, M. Buzzi, surgeon to the hospital of 
Milan, an eleve of the celebrated anatomist Moscati, published in 
the “Opusculi Scelti de Milan,” 17B4, xviii. p. 11. a very interesting 
memoir, in which he demonstrates by dissection what Blumenbach 
had only supposed. — A peasant of about forty years of age died at 
the hospital of Milan of a pulmonary disorder. His body being 
exposed to view, was exceedingly remarkable by the uncommon 
whiteness of the skin, of the hair, of the beard, and of all other 
covered parts of the body. M. Buzzi, who had long desired an 
opportunity of dissecting such a subject, immediately seized upon 
this. He found the iris of the eyes perfectly white, and the pupil of 
a rose-colour. The eyes w'ere dissected with the greatest possible 
care, and were found entirely destitute of that black membrane which 
anatomists call the uvea ; it was not to be seen either behind the 
iris, or under the retina. Within the eye there was only found 
the choroid coat extremely thin, and tinged of a pale red colour by 
vessels filled with discoloured blood. What was more extraordinary, 
the skin, when detached from different parts of the body, seemed also 
entirely divested of the rete mucosura : maceration did not discover 
the least vestige of this, not even in the wrinkles of the noblamen, 
where it is most abundant and most visible. M. Buzzi likewise 
accounts for the whiteness of the skin and of the hair, from the 
absence of the rete mucosum, which, according to him, gives the 
colour to the cuticle, and to the bars that are scattered over it. 
Among other proofs of this opinion, he alleges a known fact, that 
that if the skin of the blackest horse be accidentally destroyed in 
any part of the body, the hairs that afterwards grow on that part are 
always white, because the rete mucosum, which tinges those hairs, 
is never regenerated from the skin. The proximate cause of the 
whiteness of Albinos, and the colour of their eyes, seem therefore 
pretty evidently to depend on the absence of the rete mucosum. 
But what is the remote cause? In the first place, it seems probable 
that men affected by this infirmity form no distinct species, for they 
are produced from parents that have dark skins and black eyes. 
What is it then that destroys the rete mucosum in such persons ? 
M. Buzzi relates a singular fact, which seems to throw some light on 
this subject. — 
