THE SKIN AND HAIR. 75 



ally I fear ; at any rate mostly all. Consideration of the struc- 

 ture and anatomy of individual hairs will prompt to this con- 

 clusion, and experience, I think, confirm it. Each hair, as I 

 have already explained, springs from a bulb, and each hair- 

 bulb is naturally bedded in its own socket. The arrangement 

 is one very comparable to that of a tooth in its jaw-socket and 

 membranous investiture. If a hair be broken off, or if, grow- 

 ing weak from one of many causes, it withers down, leaving 

 the root behind, then doubtless much may be done to effect 

 restoration by proper treatment ; but if the bulb has wholly 

 gone, and the skin once closed up, then one might as well 

 expect to grow a new tooth from the gap whence a tooth had 

 been extracted, as to evolve a new hair from that particular 

 bulb-socket. 



The only effectual way I know of for imparting a new 

 head of hair to a pericranium upon which the blight of actual 

 alopecia has fallen, is transplantation. It is a well-established 

 fact that hairs can be transplanted from one head to another, 

 and that when thus transplanted they will grow. I say 

 nothing about the pain such an operation would cause tJiat 

 is a matter to be thought of by the patient. In like manner, 

 feathers and teeth will grow if similarly transplanted. The 

 experiment was tried, and it succeeded, of transplanting a 

 tooth to the comb of a cock. These physiological facts are 

 suggestive of much cranial artistic beauty, whenever fashion 

 may prompt individuals to incur the pain of its infliction. One 

 can readily imagine the imposing beauty that would come of 

 adorning human heads with birds' feathers. It would be some 

 sort of triumph for a lady to boast that she grew her own 

 ostrich-plumes ; and it would not be difficult for men of the 

 law to set-off their naturally bald pates with such a resem- 

 blance of the conventional horsehair-wig idealised as might 

 satisfy the punctilio of any martinet judge. I have dealt with 

 the proposition, seeing that it comes naturally developed out of 

 the postulate hereinbefore set down. As this thesis is intended 



