oned these
circumstances also, if they had actually contributed to bring about so
singular an event: secondly, because the confusion of language was
sufficient of itself to have accomplished this; and we cannot suppose
that the Deity could have done any thing in vain: and thirdly, because,
if mankind had been dispersed, each tribe in its peculiar hue, it is
impossible to conceive, that they could have wandered and settled in
such a manner, as to exhibit that regular gradation of colour from the
equator to the poles, so conspicuous at the present day.

These are the only periods, which there has been even the shadow of a
probability for assigning; and we may therefore conclude that the
preceding observations, together with such circumstances as will appear
in the present chapter, will amount to a demonstration, that the
difference of colour was never caused by any interposition of the Deity,
and that it must have proceeded therefore from that _incidental
co-operation of causes_, which has been before related.

What these causes are, it is out of the power of human wisdom positively
to assert: there are facts, however, which, if properly weighed and put
together, will throw considerable light upon the subject. These we shall
submit to the perusal of the reader, and shall deduce from them such
inferences only, as almost every person must make in his own mind, on
their recital.

The first point, that occurs to be ascertained, is, "What part of the
skin is the seat of colour?" The old anatomists usually divided the skin
into two parts, or lamina; the exteriour and thinnest, called by the
Greeks _Epidermis_, by the Romans _Cuticula_, and hence by us
_Cuticle_; and the interiour, called by the former _Derma_,
and by the latter _Cutis_, or _true skin_. Hence they must
necessarily have supposed, that, as the _true skin_ was in every
respect the same in all human subjects, however various their external
hue, so the seat of colour must have existed in the _Cuticle_, or
upper surface.

Malphigi, an eminent Italian physician, of the last century, was the
first person who discovered that the skin was divided into three lamina,
or parts; the _Cuticle_, the _true skin_, and a certain
coagulated substance situated between both, which he distinguished by
the title of _Mucosum Corpus_; a title retained by anatomists to
the present day: which coagulated substance adhered so firmly to the
_Cuticle_, as, in all former anatomical prepara