A Supplement to the Account of a Distempered Skin, Published in the 424th Number of the Philosophical Transactions. By Mr. Henry Baker, F. R. S.

success, and, in a month from the operation, was completed; and she remains free from pain from that time to this. P.S. I must mention what seemed remarkable upon the case: when the woman was put to bed, we came to observe the state of the eye, which appear'd a little bigger than the other; and having cut through it, we found the humours very much confused: the aqueous humour was not so clear as usual, the crystalline less solid and transparent, and the vitreous almost reduced to a liquid state. The cist was very strong and elastic, and had a cavity large enough to contain a large hen's egg. V. A Supplement to the Account of a distempered Skin, published in the 424th Number of the Philosophical Transactions. By Mr. Henry Baker, F.R.S. Read Jan. 23, 1755. In the year 1731, a lad, fourteen years of age, was brought by his father from Euston-Hall, in Suffolk, and shewn to the Royal Society, on account of his having a cuticular disorder, of a different kind from any mentioned in the histories of diseases. The extraordinary case of this boy was drawn up by Mr. John Machin, at that time one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, and was published in the Philosophical Transactions, No 42. As more than four and twenty years are now past since this account was given, and the person therein mentioned is still alive, and was lately shewn at London, by the name of the Porcupine-man, with a boy in the like condition, both which I saw, and examined; some farther knowledge of him may not, I hope, be thought undeserving the attention of this Royal Society. His name is Edward Lambert. He is now forty years of age; a good-looking, well-shaped man, of a florid countenance; and, when his body and hands are covered, seems nothing different from other people. But except his head and face, the palms of his hands, and bottoms of his feet, his skin is all over covered in the same manner as in the year 1731, which therefore I shall trouble you with no other description of, than what you will find in Mr. Machin's account above-mentioned; only begging leave to observe, that this covering seemed to me most nearly to resemble an innumerable company of warts, of a dark-brown colour, and a cylindric figure, rising to a like height, and growing as close as possible to one another; but so stiff and elastic, that, when the hand is drawn over them, they make a rusting noise. When I saw this man, in the month of September last, they were shedding off in several places, and young ones, of a paler brown, succeeding in their room, which, he told me, happens annually in some of the autumn or winter months: and then he commonly is let blood, to prevent some little sicknesses, which he else is subject to whilst they are falling off. At other times he is commoded by them no otherwise, than by the fretting out his linen, which, he says, they do do very quickly: and when they come to their full growth, being then in many places near an inch in height, the pressure of his clothes is troublesome. He has had the small-pox, and been twice salivated, in hopes of getting rid of this disagreeable covering; during which disorders the warting came off, and his skin appeared white and smooth, like that of other people; but, on his recovery, soon became as it was before. His health at other times has been very good during his whole life. But the most extraordinary circumstance of this man's story, and indeed the only reason of my giving you this trouble, is, that he has had six children, all with the same rugged covering as himself: the first appearance whereof in them, as well as in him, came on in about nine weeks after the birth. Only one of them is now living, a very pretty boy, eight years of age, whom I saw, and examined, with his father, and who is exactly in the same condition, which it is needless to repeat. He also has had the small-pox, and during that time was free from this disorder. It appears therefore past all doubt, that a race of people may be propagated by this man, having such rugged coats or coverings as himself: and, if this should ever happen, and the accidental original be forgotten, 'tis not improbable they might be deemed a different species of mankind: a consideration, which would almost lead one to imagine, that if mankind were all produced from one and the same stock, the black skins of the negroes, and many other differences of the like kind, might possibly have been originally owing to some such accidental use. Mr. Mr. George Edwards, Librarian of the College of Physicians, having lately drawn, and etched on a copper-plate, the hand of this boy, in such manner, as to shew the palm free from these excrescencies, and its other parts covered with them; and also a company of the excrescencies, as they appear where largest; a copy of the said plate, which I was favoured with by him, is now presented with this account. January 23, 1755. VI. An Extract of the Substance of Three Letters from Isaac Jamineau, Esq; his Majesty's Consul at Naples, to Sir Francis Hoskins Eyles Stiles, Bart. and F. R. S. concerning the late Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In the first of these letters, which is dated December 7, 1754, Mr. Jamineau acquaints Sir Francis, that they were then in the third day of an eruption of Vesuvius, which already far exceeded the last in 1751, and bids fair to equal any of those since the burial of Herculaneum. It is some time that they have expected the present, from foregoing circumstances, similar to, though more extraordinary than, those of former eruptions. Mr. Jamineau himself was witness to the following ones. In April last, the fire issued from one end of a hillock, in the shape of a crescent, within the c., to which you descended from the upper