OH. A TUKATISK UN 1'ILK. ]OQ 



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 " its 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 it 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, frpm its posterior extremity to the point where it penetrates 

 the epidermis, is enclosed in a sheath, which (according to Henle) is composed of an 

 internal and external layer; which (sheath) effectually protects the >haft of the hair from 

 any such pressure as is supposed on behalf of the dermis;f and, as to ths 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, .!/.: 

 that a filament of hair or wool grown partly in a warm and partly in a cold season, ought 

 to vary in its diameter, according to his reasoning; whereas, in Gill's Technical Reposi- 

 tory for 1^28, 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 the 

 difference in the annual growths.''' And we have, in our collection of specimens of wool, 

 one eighteen inches long, taken from a 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. Knowl., 67 ; also, Andersen on Wool, 124.) 

 Col. Randall, while he admits the fact of wool being f:r.cr in cold climates, (?) denies these infennces. " I r.m lather dis- 

 posed (says this gentleman) to look for the cause of this phenomenon in the amount and quality of the wifi-iuifiil received. 

 by the animal." (See Sheep Husbandry in the South, p. 23.) 



t Besides, there is found a liquid grease between the exterior coat of the sheath and the interior of the follicl . 



