plaining the way in which freckles are said to be produced. These are frequently to be seen in the faces of children even in our own climate, but of such only as have the thinnest or most transparent outward skins, and are occasioned by the rays of the sun striking forcibly on the mucous substance beneath the skin of the face and producing perspiration or drops of sweat, and then drying the accumulated fluid. This accumulated fluid or perspired matter is at first colourless, and being exposed to heat and thereby dried becomes yellow and then brown. Hence the mucous substance being tinged or dyed in various parts by this coagulated fluid, and the parts so tinged appearing through the outward skin which is semi-transparent, arises that spotted appearance observable on the faces of freckled persons. But let us now suppose the rays of the sun to act so universally on the mucous substance beneath the skin in a person's face, as to produce these spots so contiguous to each other that they should unite and form one mass of freckles, we should then see a face similar to those, which are daily to be seen among coloured people; and if we were to suppose his body to be constantly exposed to the sun and atmosphere, and acted upon in the same manner, we should then see his

body as well as his face assuming a similar appearance, and thus we should see the whole man resembling one of the naked inhabitants of one of the hotter zones. Now as the seat of freckles and of the blackness of a man's skin is the same, and as the cause of the first is the ardour of the sun, it is most likely that one of the causes of the second is the same: and this suggestion seems to be confirmed by another consideration; for if blackness is occasioned by the rays of the sun striking forcibly and universally on the mucous substance of the skin of a man's body, and causing perspirable matter to come there, and drying it when produced, we may account for the different degrees of it to be found in the different inhabitants of the globe; for as the quantity of perspirable fluid or matter and the force of the solar rays are successively increased as the climates are successively warmer from the poles to the equator, it follows that the fluid or matter, with which the mucous substance will be tinged, will be successively thicker and deeper coloured, and hence as it appears, or shines through the outer skin, the complexion will be successively darker, or, what amounts to the same thing, there will be a difference of colour in the inhabitants of every successive parallel.

Now, having proceeded thus far, I think that we may safely come at least to one conclusion, which is, that if a child were born of white parents in the torrid zone, and to go naked like the natives there, and to attain the age of forty or fifty years, the whole mucous substance of his body from head to foot would be so completely dyed by the sun by that time, that his flesh would most likely exhibit the appearance of a yellowish brown, and that he might with as much propriety be called a yellow brown, as a negro is called a black man; and that he might with as much propriety be considered as belonging to a different race of men from the black or white man, as the black or the white man is now too often considered as belonging to a different race from him. But I shall stop here, and leave others to follow the clue which I have furnished. I shall leave it to others to enquire whether there may not be other causes which have an influence in tinging the mucous substance of the human body; and also whether the colour of the inhabitants of any country after a residence in it for several centuries, be the colour black, brown, olive, or white, may not, during that long time have become so incorporated into their constitutions as that it may have been transmitted to

their children, and yet not so entirely or permanently as not to be capable of undergoing a gradual change upon their removal to an entirely different climate. There are instances in history of black people removed centuries ago to what may be called a white latitude, who are now white; and, on the other hand of white people removed to what may be called a black latitude who are not only now as black as the aboriginal inhabitants but who may be seen with the woolly hair of these and even with their features. I have myself known instances of persons carried from Africa to the West Indies and brought from thence to this country, whose colour in the course of from twenty to thirty years became less dark by some shades than when they arrived here.

ANTEDILUVIAN,

PATRIARCHAL,

AND OTHER RESEARCHES.

PART II.

We have seen in the preceding Essay, that the first men gained all their religious knowledge from God himself, but that they had made so bad a use of it, or that so many of them had gone off, and so many more were on the point of going off into idolatry, even so early as the time of Abraham, that, if it had not pleased God to interfere, the probability was, that every family then upon earth (for the inhabitants of the whole world then lay within a very small compass) would in a short time have been infected by this moral contagion. We have seen again that God

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