Nebraska advertiser., 1863-01-24
AS the Toongooses are generally taw'


ny, it is possible that they may be sub
iect to some disposition pretty similar to
thai which transforms the negroes into
AIbinos ;-that this indisposition, instead
Of affecting the whole body in general,
as is the case with the Albinos, affects
but certain parts Of it, divided into zones
or INFO irregular regions, and that this
Enthusiastically variety is afterwards trans
mitted from parents to children, through
the same physical mechanism which
causes a number Of other varieties to be
transmitted among all the nations Of the
world.
10. Some travellers have advanced that
there exists, in certain islands of Asia,
for instances in Borneo and Manillas is
lands, men NTH a tail, viz: savages OF
both sexes, whose spine Of the back is
terminated by a small tail rather similar
to that Of goats and deers. This fact
has been lately demonstrated by Isodore
Godfrey Saint Hilaire, in his first studies
on natural history, published in Paris In
1858. but that phenomenon is but a sin
gular e~cyeScence, an unusual prolonga-
ton of the coccix, that which is not sufi-
cient to make of those savages a different
race. That excrescence or prolongation
of the coccix, in the shape of a tail, in
the savages we have just mentioned, has
nothing more surprising, if it be real,
than the unusual excrescence which forms
goitres, and which enlarges and prolongs
the thyroid gland, and sometimes as far
down as the Middle or even to the infe-
rior extremity Of the chest, in some IN
habitants of the Alps and of the Cordi
leras in America then the unusual ex-
crescence which forms the natural aprons
of the Hottentot women, or which pro-
longs in them the skin of the abdomen
to the middle of the thighs, in the shape
of a supple or movable apron, Inherent to
their substance and TO their person.
Goitres are an enlargement and thick
ening of the Emphatic liquid in the eel
lular tissue. They are very coRmQn
among the people who dwell at the foot
of the C%ordilleras, in almost ali Southern
America, and among those who live al
the foot of The Alps, in Savoy, in Pied
mont, Tyrol, 1t is also common among
the people who live on the bottom land
opposite 10 us in Missouri, Atchison
county, where Ihave seen many a person
with goitres, although small. 1t is the
crudity of the snow.waters, which those
different people drink the whole year
round, or rather It is the in~salubrious and
]noxious quality of the various substance:
which these waters keep in dissolution
and which make them crude and un.
healthy until they are deprived of those
substances, or until they are ~attenuated
and macerated, which produces in them,
according to all the n~aturalists, that en-.
gnrgement, that thiOkening, that enlarge
ment and intumescence. 1t may be more
difficult to assign determinatedly the
physical cause which effects, as an agent,
the natural aprons Of the HOttentot wo-
men. But it is generally certain thai
this monstrous excrescence is not an ef-
feet which is beyond physical causes,
whether it owes its existence only to the
internal action of nature. or whether the
art of parents, in these barbarous coun,
tries, concurs to create it,-as the art OF
parents concurs to form fiat, or crushed
or elongated heads, mouths wider or mar
rover, noses more prominent or more
aattened, jaws Of which one is more pro-
Fjecting than the other, among the sava-
ges of America ;-as the art of the par
ents concurs to form monstrously small
feet among almost ali the Chinese wo-
men, etc. ?
5T Gro DE coNr1rUED.)