70 COSMETICS. 



ing all over the skin, impart a look of such delicacy and soft- 

 ness. The absence of this down is very conspicuous on a 

 waxwork presentment of the human face divine. Anybody 

 with true artistic eye, having gazed on a waxwork, even the 

 most admirably finished, must have been struck with a certain 

 ghastly unreality; he perhaps knows not what or why. It 

 may seem strange that it should be, yet so it is. The defect 

 can hardly be due to that merely explicable on the assump- 

 tion of imperfect colouring; it must be referred to a deeper 

 source. It comes of this, namely, the wax surface is wholly 

 devoid of those small hairs of that soft down; hence the 

 unreality. Now to the point. Whenever, if ever, and per- 

 haps it will be sooner than I think whenever some artist in 

 female-charm rejuvenation, commencing where I left off, 

 takes up this cdllodionising treatment of the fair, I counsel 

 him or her to devise some means of imparting the much- 

 desiderated downy finish. I think it could be effected in the 

 same way that the manufacture of plush-enamelled paper is 

 effected. This, however, is a point to be investigated by 

 any one who, profiting by the indications herein set down, 

 may think proper to work-out the process to his or her own 

 profit. 



Consideration of the skin naturally leads on to the hair 

 and nails, between both which and the cuticle there is a close 

 similarity. The hair claims cosmetic priority. What can 

 be more beautiful than it, when copious, soft, and delicately 

 tended? what more hateful, more destructive of the charm 

 of loveliness, when allowed to degenerate into savagery by 

 some inappropriate treatment? 



A hair consists of three parts the root, which is fixed 

 in the skin, the shaft or stem, and the point. The usual 

 shape of the stem is a cylinder ; it may be flattened, or even 

 grooved. Hair, we all know, varies much as to size. What 

 a difference, for example, between the whiskers of a cat and 

 the hairs of the sleek coat of her tiny victim ! Even for one 



