Ronnie Fowler, age 9, of Boiestown, N.B., Canada, for his question:

What are freckles?

We might say that those nice freckles on your cheeks are kisses left by friendly sunbeams. In any case, almost always they are put there by the shining sun. Actually, sunshine does not paint candy brown freckles on the skin. The skin comes in several layers and the brownish material was there all the time, in a lower layer. The sunshine just brought speckled patches of the color to the surface    where everybody can admire them.

Freckles get their color from a brownish material called melanin. The body makes this stuff to color eyes and hair and there is always some of it down in the deeper layers of the skin. Dark skinned people have more melanin closer to the surface, light skinned people have less. When light skinned people stay in the sun, melanin brings its brown tints to the top of the skin. It may form an even spread of tan  ¬or speckled rashes of brownish freckles.