forty, and in many cases at a much earlier period. This premature decay of the figure may, with out doubt, be attributed to the neglect of suitable hygienic means, far in early life those females are in no way deformed.
Many travellers have spoken of the large and pendulous mammæ of the females of certain barbaraus tribes, particularly in Africa. There is no original difference in these cases. The Hottentots and Negresses, previously to child-bearing, have bosoms as finely formed as any women; but after this, the breasts became very loose and flaccid, so that they can turn them over or under the shoulder, and suckle their infants on their backs. This practice, and that of long-continued suckling, probably tends to increase the elongatian.
Bruce says of the Shangallas, that, "after a few days, when the child has gathered strength, the mother carries it in the same cloth upon her back, and gives it suck with her breast, which she throws over her shoulder; this part being of such a length as, in same cases, to reach almost to the knees."
Captain Tuckey also notices the "pendent flaccidity of bosom" belonging to some of the African women.
Dr. Sommerville also says that the breasts of the Hottentot women, "after one or two births, are flaccid, wrinkled, and pendulous, hanging down sometimes to the grains, like bags suspended from the neck."
Cuvier, Barrow, Ulloa, and others, have noticed the same thing, not only in the African but in other races.
The same thing has also been observed in same European females, who, from slovenly habits, have neglected to give the necessary support to the parts in question. Lithgow, in his "Rare Adventures and paineful Peregrinations," p. 433, says, "I saw in Ireland's noth parts, women travayling the way or toyling at home, carry their infants about their neckes, and laying the dugges over their shoulders, give sucke to. the babes behind their backes, without taking them in their armes: such kind of breasts, me thinketh, were very fit to be made maney-bags for East or West Indian merchants, being more than half a yard long, and as well wrought as any tanner in the like charge could ever mollifie such leather."
It is true that Englishwomen are not subject, to the same extent as those females are; to this falling of the breasts; still there is in all
