90 NATURAL HISTORY. 



The upper eye-lid rises and falls, the lower has scarce- 

 ly any motion. 



The ancients erroneously considered the hair as a 

 kind of excrement, and believed that, like the nails, it 

 increased by the lower part pushing out the extremity. 

 But the moderns have discovered that every hair is a 

 tube, which fills and receives nutriment like the other 

 parts of the body. The roots, they observe, do not 

 turn grey sooner than the extremities, but the whole 

 changes its colour at once. We have known persons 

 the hair of whose heads have become grey in one night. 



There is no part of the body which has been subject 

 to such changes of fashion as the hair and the beard. 



... 



Some people, and among others the Turks, cut the 

 hair off their heads, and let their beards grow. The 

 Europeans, on the contrary, shave their beards, and 

 wear their hair. The negroes shave their heads in 

 figures at one time, in stars at another, in the manner 

 of friars; and still more commonly in alternate stripes ; 

 and their little boys are shaved in the same manner. 

 The Talapoins of Siam, shave the heads and the eye- 

 brows of such children as are committed to their care. 

 Every nation seems to have entertained different pre- 

 judices, at different times, in favour of one part or 

 another of the beard. 



The neck supports the head, and unites it to the 

 body. This part is much more considerable in the 

 greater number of quadrupeds, than in man. But fishes 

 and other animals that have not lungs similar t!o 

 ours, have no neck whatever. Birds, in general, have 

 the neck longer than any other kind of animal. Those 

 which have short claws, have also short necks ; those 

 on the contrary, that have them long, are found to 

 have the neck in proportion. 



