Hybrids, mulattos, or crosses between blacks and whites, are well known to blush as freely and fully as pure whites. And there is no question as to the blush appearing in brown and yellow races. It is certainly not a phenomenon belonging exclusively to the white races. It belongs to all mankind, and to man only of all animals. It seems to follow that the mental state, which excites it, is experienced by man in every condition in which ho has been found.

The blush is very striking in the white races, but there is no evidence that in such races it increases either in frequency or strength according to the degree of culture. It is often troublesome and is never desired, but it is nowhere thought unbecoming or a sign of badness. Indeed, it adds to the price given for a Circassian beauty that she is seen to blush. It comes without the will and in spite of it, stays for a moment, then vanishes, perhaps to return again, and again to vanish. It is not a thing which can be painted on a woman's face, for it is not simply a red flush. It is more. There is a subtle change in the physiognomy, which is needed to transform the flush into the blush.

It is said that Sir Thomas Lawrence told Fanny Kemble that he nearly drove himself mad in attempting to paint a blush, which he calls 'the most extraordinary incident in a woman's face.' The result of his efforts was merely a red complexion - at most a flush, with no chance of its being taken by any one for a blush.

(18) Before the blush of shame, of either variety, can appear the blusher must possess some reason and understanding. This is needed to call up the state of mind, which in its turn calls up the blush. Hence the deeply idiotic are said never to blush. Such is the genera], and, in my opinion, well founded belief. For the same reason it is said that infants do not blush. This seems also to be true. But blushing begins at an early age. It seems beyond question that it may occur at the age of four. We cannot, however, explain in this way why the habit of blushing wears away in advancing years and may disappear altogether in old age, nor can we explain in this way why women blush more frequently than men. Reason and understanding increase with age, at least up to a certain point, and they are not weaker in men than they arc in women. What seems to happen is this. Reason and understanding after youth is over are strong enough to show that there is really no cause for feeling a sense of shame at the usually trivial things which bring up that feeling in the young, whether these things relate to faults or to embarrassing or unbecoming situations. All the things which raise the blush of shame so freely in the young are really trivial in their nature. They are never of grave or serious import. No blush accordingly attends them, when grown-up persons have come to see their triviality. They do not feel the shame that raises the blush. Hence in advanced life blushing is rare.

The greater blushing of women is probably explained by their continuing longer in the conditions of youth, and so failing for a longer time to realise the unsubstantial and trifling character of what ordinarily raises the blush. I seem to refer here to a slower growth in women of reason and understanding as the explanation of the longer continuance of blushing in them, but I should also take into account woman's greater constitutional sensitiveness. Woman may be, and perhaps is, superior to man in some directions, but she is not identical, either in mind, or body, or development. There are differences, and there is nothing to cause surprise in finding that blushing lasts longer in her than in man, as the outcome probably of more causes than one. To her also, however, there comes eventually a time when blushing practically ceases. In both sexes, after youth is over, reason shows that the transgressions of the moral sense, which, under detection, reddened the cheeks while youth lasted, were either imaginary or of little importance, and that the sense of shame at being thought to have committed gaucheries, or breaches of etiquette, or acts of indelicacy was in reality childish and silly, and these things then cease to excite both the sense of shame and its expression.

(19) It is beyond question that deaf-mutes blush in all respects as ordinary hearing persons do, and this is what we might expect, for, though they do not hear what is said by onlookers or bystanders, they see them and they easily perceive anything in their minds, which would provoke blushing in those who hear as well as see.

It is as much beyond question that blushing appears among those born blind. I have made careful inquiry on this subject, and find that young persons of both sexes, who are congenitally blind, are often great blushers. They do not see the onlookers, but they hear what is said. They are often apprehensive that more persons are present and looking at them than are really present, and this itself is apt to raise the mental state out of which a blush arises. They themselves, indeed, give this explanation, and say that they would not have blushed, if they had known that only so-and-so were present.

The case of those who are born both deaf and blind is more interesting, and the information about them is more scanty. Darwin quotes Lieber (Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. p. 6, 1851) as saying that Laura Bridgman blushed, but much fuller information regarding her blushing is given by Dr. Howe in his Annual Reports, to which reference has elsewhere been made, and by Mrs. Lamson in her Life of Laura Bridgman. We are told that she disclosed a sense of shame, when a rent in her dress or dirt on her person was pointed out, and that she was herself aware that blood came into her face, when she was found out doing wrong. She could never speak of having kissed a fellow pupil, who was a boy, without blushing very much. Yet she showed a purity, modesty, and propriety so difficult to explain, as to make Dr. Howe regard it as innate, because in his opinion she had not 'as yet any idea of sex.' When she had attempted to conceal having broken a glass, and her fault was found out, 'the blood rushed to her face.' She once asked her governess, with much blushing: 'Do you think I shall ever be married with a gentleman whom I love best and most?' The question was suggested by the approaching marriage of her teacher, Dr. Howe, about which she naturally had learned much from her fellow pupils and governesses. She was then about fourteen or fifteen years old.