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azul, or pure Spanish blood. Even admitting, for the sake of argument, what is more than doubtful, that there is in any part of the civilized world pure racial stock, let us first of all ask ourselves, What is meant by the expression, or rather what ought to be meant by the expression, pure Spanish blood? Undoubtedly, it ought to mean the blood of the Iberians, the ancient inhabitants of Spain. But when Dr. Brinton came to demonstrate the present existence of pure Spanish blood, it was found that his attempted demonstration looked to the proving of the present existence in modern Spain of pure Visigothic blood. But, obviously. whether or not it has been maintained over many centuries, it certainly is not original Spanish blood, as we have seen from the brief history of the original and subsequent condition of the country within historical times. In a word, great as Dr. Brinton undeniably is as ethnologist and philologist, and much else in different branches of learning, and highly as we among thousands of others respect his talents and acquirements, he has in this instance of an attempted demonstration, that Visigothic pure blood is Spanish pure blood, fallen into what lawyers call a non sequitur.

The American has not yet a distinctive racial type, as has the Englishman, the Scotchman, the Irishman, the Frenchman, the Russian, the German, or the inhabitant of any other country but this. Time is to produce it by the fusion and prolonged life through generations of representatives of many races. The working of this law we are witnessing on the grandest scale upon which it has ever manifested itself. Into this, our country, of magnificent extent, extremely fertile, and rich in almost every mineral treasure, has poured, apart from riffraff, some of the best blood of Europe, in multitudes of industrious, law-abiding Germans, energetic Irishmen, Swedes, Norwegians, and individuals of many other nations. Among these, as among people of all nations, we recognize national traits of character, which, differing

from each other, cannot all be virtues, and some of which must therefore be deemed faults. These, not being essential to the organization, in the course of the intermingling of races disappear by neutralizing each other, while, the higher qualities remaining, a higher type is evolved. It is from the concurrence of a fine population represented by various races, amidst unusual affluence of nature, with unprecedented general prosperity, and such relations between the sexes as more than elsewhere lead to the gratification of romantic love, that there is good reason to believe in a future of the races here, blended into the unity of a higher type than elsewhere in the world, which shall exhibit a general diffusion of health and beauty such as never until then had been approached.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE SKIN AS AN ORGAN OF THE BODY.

HE skin is to be regarded from two points of view,―as an

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organ of the body, and as its finished exterior. The first of these relates to the health of the whole body, the second to its final touch of beauty in a surface soft, pliant, and exquisitely delicate in color. Health and beauty, therefore, the two topics of this work, being both concerned, and beauty being (as cannot be too earnestly impressed upon the reader) entirely dependent upon, although not constituted by health, the natural order in which to consider the skin will be, first, as it is subservient to health, and then, as it is conducive to beauty. Accordingly, the present chapter will be devoted to an examination of its relation to health, and the one immediately following to that of its relation to beauty.

The skin consists of the subcutaneous connective tissue, the corium, and the epidermis. In the subcutaneous connective tissue originate the most deeply seated of the structures which have relation to the skin,-arteries, capillaries, lymphatics, nerves, sweat-glands, and the bases of the roots of the hair which penetrate deepest. The blood-vessels there are large, and after supplying the nutrition of the hair, the sweat-glands, and the fatty lobules that are present for the nourishment of the parts, branch into the corium. The subcutaneous connective tissue sometimes, as on the seat, which is quite a thick cushion, blends with the corium by means of little fatty columns, which there reach the base of the roots of the finer hair. Passing through the skin are involuntary muscles sometimes accompanying these, which muscles, under the influence of sudden chill of the surface of the body, or of fear or other great cerebral excitement, erect the hair.

The corium is termed the true skin. It corresponds to what, when tanned, we call in the lower animals leather. It consists of two layers, the only difference between which in character is that the upper layer is the more compact. It is richly nourished with blood-vessels and lymphatics, and as the greater number of hair-roots are there, so also are present the greater number of sebaceous glands, which are glands secreting for the benefit of the hair and skin an oily liquor called sebum, similar in constitution to suet.

The epidermis, or scarf-skin, consists of four distinct layers. These are, in the descending order, the stratum corneum (the horny layer), the stratum lucidum (the transparent layer), the stratum granulosum (the granular layer), and the stratum mucosum (the mucous layer). The epidermis means simply the top skin, the outermost portion of which is, as stated, the horny layer. When, as is often seen, a blister detaches the upper from the lower skin, it is the whole of the four layers just described which have been separated from the corium, or true skin. It is therefore apparent that the layers are very thin.

Without proceeding farther in investigation of the epidermis, it will suffice to say that, through its four layers, cells graduate from the corium, gradually changing in constitution and shape as they ascend, until, in their final transformation, they become the scales of the horny layer of the scarf-skin. We regret, in the interest of the reader's memorizing, that there are so many layers to the epidermis, but the fact being that there are, and they having been enumerated, it will suffice for the purpose here in view to consider the skin as simply formed of the subcutaneous connective tissue, the corium, and the epidermis.

The sweat-ducts, proceeding from the sweat-glands, in the subcutaneous connective tissue, pass through the corium and epidermis, and debouch on the outside of the latter with trumpet-mouthed orifices. Thus are discharged from the body

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