OR, A TREATISE ON PILE. 129 
ventures the opinion, that pile is affected by the tissue of the skin through which it passes. 
“In warm climates (he says) the hair of man is generally black and coarse; in cold ones 
we find flaxen, yellow, and various shades of brown. And even when the hair takes a 
deeper shade, (he says,) that it is finer than the lank, black hair of the South.” He 
inquires, “‘may not this be owing, in some sort, to the skin being more braced in the one 
and more lax in the other?” In applying the same rule to wool, he opines that ‘7s fine- 
ness may be affected by the state of the thermometer when the young wool obtrudes through 
the skin.” “If it is compressed (he says) it will be fine—if it finds an easy passage, it will 
be coarse.” (See p. 124.)* 
To those who are in the habit of examining the different parts of pile, under tho micro- 
scope, this notion of Mr. Livingston’s will appear to be fanciful; and it would not have 
been noticed, but for the great respectability of the author, and the importance of under- 
standing correctly every thing which relates to wool. 
The shaft of a mature hair, from its posterior extremity to the point where it penetrates 
the epidermis, is enclosed in a sheath, which (according to Henlé) is composed of an 
internal and external layer; which (sheath) effectually protects the shaft of the hair from 
any such pressure as is supposed on behalf of the dermis;} and, as to the epidermis, it is 
too thin and porous to afford any such obstructing and condensing power. 
It is true that Mr Livingston, in a subsequent page of his essay, admits that ‘men of 
high latitudes have hair similar to that of those near the line’”—an admission which 
(in our opinion) is destructive to his theory ; but he endeavors to explain this contradiction 
by saying, “that the smoky huts, slender diet, and habit of greasing the hair, in high 
latitudes, have precisely the same effect in relaxing the skin as the continual exposure to 
the rays of a tropical sun.” <A non sequitur, which will be apparent to the learned 
reader. 
But there is another and a conclusive answer to this theory of Mr. Livingston’s, vis: 
that a filament of hair or wool grown partly in a warm and partly in a cold season, ought 
to vary nits diameter, according to his reasoning; whereas, in Gill’s Technical Reposi- 
tory for 1528, v. 2, p. 72, will be found a letter from Mr. Charles C. Western, accom- 
panying specimens of wool of his own raising, one of them of the growth of nearly three 
years, upon which that gentleman remarks, that “there is no possibility of discovering tle 
difference in the annual growths.’ And we have, in our collection of specimens of wool, 
one eighteen inches long, taken froma Merino ram, being his first shearing in three years’ 
growth, and not the slightest indication of there having a pressure and relaxation of the 
skin can be detected. 
OF THE SPECIFIC GRAVITY OF PILE.—In the Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 97, Doctor 
* Mr. Youatt advances a similar opinion in regard to wool. (See Lib. of Use. Knuwl., 67; also, Andersen on Wool, 124.) 
Col. Randall, while he admits the fact of wool being finer in cold climates, (?) denies these inferences. ‘‘I am rather dis- 
posed (says this gentleman) to look for the cause of this phenomenon in the amount and quality of the nutriment reecived 
by the animal.” (See Sheep Husbandry in the South, p. 23.) 
7 Besides, there is found a liquid grease between the exterior coat of the sheath and the interior of the follicle. 
