White Negress

The practicability oí convcrting a nigger into a white uian has usually been placed in very ruucli the same category as that of ehanging the Ethiopian's skin or effaciug the spots froui a leopard. It wil], thercfore, be soruewliat surprisiDg to non-scientifie reidera to hearol tho cai-e of Celine Henry, whieh was recounted lately to a society of' anthropologista by a certain I)r. Smester. 'J'liis woiuan, who was a uative of llayti, aiid was about thirty-n've years old, began in the year 18C0 or thercabouts to notice that the color which she had always supposed to be natural to her skin was slowly lading away in many places, and being replaced by a hue resembling that of a whito woiuan. Far from being plcaed with the transformaron scène whicu the iairies were thus working upon her, she entirely objected to the proceedings, and took every imaginable step to prevent the completion oí a freak of' nature wbich her enemies might make bold to cali experimentum in corjwre vil!. Doctors were called in, and the native porcerers were all eonsulted ; but nothing seemed to arrest the progress of the nialady which the astonished negress was at least f'aiu to coDsider as a disease. For fifteen long years the detested tint of tho white European eocroached steadily upon the frontier lines of the African black, unti in 1877 there was no more of the original color left tban a few spots, wbich, if addtd together, would not as much as cover a man's hand. The aflliction which cansed so much terror and chagrín to Missor Mm. Celine Henry is, howeyer, ODe which is not uuknown to physiologists. It is no other than a disease commonly ealled vitíligo, which is oceasionally congenital in the African and other dark-colored races, and is sometimes developed in an accidental shape in Europeansor white men. Tho name te, of course, derived from the Latín vituhu, a calf, aod is meant to expres that color which is the best known as distinguishini the flc.sh of thoe animáis. It appears to cause no pain whatover, and to have little or no effect upon the general health ; and if' the fair Celine, as she may now ma-t fairly be called, had not been dominated by an extravagant fear, bhe would not have much cause to lament over her conversiou from black to white.