[Footnote 4:  In the opinion here expressed the Editor has already acquiesced.  He would remark by the bye, that although two or more persons had been of the same family, no sufficient argument could have been adduced, as to the peculiar affection depending on circumstances adequate to constitute a species; for it is very clear that hereditary diseases do not necessarily imply essential distinctions, and there seems no reason to alter the laws of logic in favour of the Albinos.—­E.]

It is a custom in most countries where the inhabitants have long hair, for the men to cut it short, and the women to pride themselves in its length.  Here, however, the contrary custom prevails; the women always cut it short round their ears, and the men, except the fishers, who are almost continually in the water, suffer it to flow in large waves over their shoulders, or tie it up in a bunch on the top of their heads.

They have a custom also of anointing their heads with what they call monoe, an oil expressed from the cocoa-nut, in which some sweet herbs or flowers have been infused:  As the oil is generally rancid, the smell is at first very disagreeable to a European; and as they live in a hot country, and have no such thing as a comb, they are not able to keep their heads free from lice, which the children and common people sometimes pick out and eat; a hateful custom, wholly different from their manners in every other particular; for they are delicate and cleanly almost without example, and those to whom we distributed combs, soon delivered themselves from vermin, with a diligence which showed that they were not more odious to us than to them.[5]

[Footnote 5:  This remark is scarcely consistent with what is related in the missionary account, by which it appears that these vermin are considered by the Otaheitans much in the same light as certain animals were once in our own land, viz. royal property.  The passage is too curious to be omitted.  It displays a very remarkable instance of that ease and elegance, with which crowned heads can occasionally employ themselves for the good of their subjects.  “The mode of carrying the king and queen is with their legs hanging down before, seated on the shoulders and leaning on the head of their carriers, and very frequently amusing themselves with picking out the vermin which there abound.  It is the singular privilege of the queen, that of all women, she alone may eat them; which privilege she never fails to make use of.”  Such hunting excursions are surely much more commendable, because much more innocent in their own nature and more beneficial in their results, than those practised amongst ourselves, at the risque of neck and limbs, and to the still more important detriment of the farmer’s gates and fences.  The point of privilege, perhaps, is less capable of defence—­admitting, however, for a moment, that pre-eminence of station and office entitles the holder to singularity of inclination and conduct, as it is certainly allowed to do in the case of some other sovereigns, the question then becomes a mere matter of taste, and it is ungenerous to deny the Otaheitan queen the benefit of the old maxim, de gustibus non est disputandum.—­E.]