excessive, even to the eyelashes. A skin
covered with downy hair is one of the marks
of a scrofulous child, and who has not been
saddened by the charm of the long eyelashes
over the lustrous eye of the consumptive
girl!

The very anomalies of growth show that
the hair must fulfil more than a trifling
purpose in the system. There has been an
account published in the present century by
Ruggieri, of a woman, twenty-seven years of
age, who was covered from the shoulders to
the knees with black woolly hair, like that of
a poodle dog. Very recently, a French
physician has related the case of a young
lady over whose skin, after a fever, hair grew
so rapidly that, at the end of a month, she
was covered with a hairy coat, an inch long,
over every part of her body, except the face,
the palms of the hands, and the soles of the
feet.

There are other less curious accounts of
women who are obliged to shave regularly
once or twice a week; and it may be asked
why are not all women compelled to shave?
If beards and whiskers serve a purpose, why
are they denied to women? That is a
question certainly not difficult to answer.
For the same reason that the rose is painted
and the violet perfumed, there are assigned
by nature to the woman attributes of grace
heightened by physical weakness, and to the
man attributes of dignity and strength. A
thousand delicate emotions were to play
about the woman's mouth, expressions that
would not look beautiful in man. We all
know that there is nothing more ridiculous to
look at than a ladies' man who assumes
femininity to please his huge body of sisters,
and wins their confidence by making himself
quite one of their own set. The character of
woman's beauty would be marred by hair
upon the face; moreover, what rest would
there be ever for an infant on the mother's
bosom, tickled perpetually with a mother's
beard ? Not being framed for active bodily
toil, the woman has not the man's capacious
lungs, and may need also less growth of hair.
But the growth of hair in women really
is not much less than in the other sex.
The hair upon a woman's head is, as a
general rule, coarser, longer, and the whole
mass is naturally heavier than the hair upon
the head of a man. Here, by the way, I
should like to hint a question, whether since
what is gained in one place seems to be lost
in another, the increased growth at the chin
produced by constant shaving may not help
to account for some part of the weakness of
hair upon the crown, and of the tendency to
premature baldness which is so common in
English civilised society ?

The hair upon the scalp, so far as concerns
its mechanical use, is no doubt the most
important of the hair-crops grown upon the
human body. It preserves the brain from
all extremes of temperature, retains the
warmth of the body, and transmits very
slowly any impression from without. The
character of the hair depends very much
upon the degree of protection needed by its
possessor. The same hair—whether of head
or beard—that is in Europe straight, smooth,
and soft, becomes after a little travel in hot
climates crisp and curly, and will become
smooth again after a return to cooler latitudes.
By a natural action of the sun's light and
heat upon the hair that curliness is produced,
and it is produced in proportion as it is
required, until, as in the case of negroes
under the tropical suns of Africa, each hair
becomes so intimately curled up with its
neighbours as to produce what we call a
woolly head. All hair is wool, or rather all
wool is hair, and the hair of the negro differs
so much in appearance from that of the
European, only because it is so much more
curled, and the distinct hairs are so much
more intimately intertwined. The more hair
curls, the more thoroughly does it form a
web in which a stratum of air lies entangled
to maintain an even temperature on the
surface of the brain. For that reason it is
made a law of Nature, that the hair should
be caused to curl most in the hottest climates.

A protection of considerable importance is
provided in the same way by the hair of the
face to a large and important knot of nerves
that lies under the skin near the angle of the
lower jaw, somewhere about the point of
junction between the whiskers and the beard.
Man is born to work out of doors and in all
weathers, for his bread; woman was created
for duties of another kind, which do not
involve constant exposure to sun, wind, and
rain. Therefore man only goes abroad
whiskered and bearded, with his face muffled
by nature in a way that shields every sensitive
part alike from wind, rain, heat, or frost,
with a perfection that could be equalled by
no muffler of his own devising. The whiskerless
seldom can bear long exposure to a sharp
wind that strikes on the bare cheek. The
numbness then occasioned by a temporary
palsy of the nerves has in many cases become
permanent; I will say nothing of aches and
pains that otherwise affect the face or teeth.
For man who goes, out to his labour in the
morning, no better summer shield or winter
covering against the sun or storm can be
provided, than the hair which grows over
those parts of the face which need protection
and descends as beard in front of the neck
and chest, a defence infinitely more useful as
well as more becoming than a cravat about
the neck, or a prepared hareskin over the pit
of the stomach. One of the finest living
prose-writers in our language suffered for
many years from sore throat, which was
incurable, until following the advice of an
Italian surgeon, he allowed his beard to grow;
and Mr. Chadwick has pointed out the fact
that the sappers and miners of the French,
army, who are all men with fine beards, are