NOTES ON THE HAIR-SLOPE IN MAN. 313 



would in some fashion or other dress what they now call their 

 ' back hair.' This would of necessity involve some drawing 

 together, and perhaps drawing upwards of the two streams 

 which fall from the sides of the head. At this stage man, if 

 he attended at all to his hair, would employ some form of 

 combing downwards. From analogies of various kinds, one 

 would suppose the attempts at ornamentation would be much 

 earlier in women than men. There have been also nations in 

 whom the fashion of drawing the hair together into a pigtail 

 has been common, so that here, as well as in the female 

 methods of dressing hair, the required traction towards the 

 middle line of large masses of hair is furnished. Such a 

 force acting through numerous generations could hardly fail 

 to confirm the Exceptional type of slope in the descendants, 

 and the mere combing downwards of hair would confirm the 

 Normal type in other descendants. Whether this strange 

 difference of type, now found in English people, be due or not 

 to the inheritance from male or female ancestors respectively, 

 the equal division of the numbers examined as to this character 

 is at least suggestive. To estimate the effect of the tying 

 together and plaiting of a woman's hair, one has only to 

 examine the case of one whose type is a Normal one, and to see 

 the sharp inward turn of the hair which is sufficiently long to 

 be caught up (which is pretty constant and not at all easy to 

 alter), and the outward or lateral course of the hairs which 

 have been too short to be caught up. 



The statistical consideration of this matter in China would 

 be of much interest. 



3. Lateral aspect of ncch. — There occurs here a peculiarity 

 of slope not found in apes and monkeys. In them the stream 

 passes on each side with little or no alteration of direction from 

 the face to the pectoral regions. In man the stream from the 

 face passes similarly without much divergence until it reaches 

 the level of about the middle of the anterior triangle of the 

 neck, where it meets near the middle line in a slightly oblique 

 direction an ascending stream from the pectoral and anterior 

 cervical regions. At this point the opposing streams coalesce 

 and together form the stream found on the dorsal aspect of the 

 neck and merge into the stream which descends from the 



