TEGUMENTAL SYSTEM. 411 



arms, it is thin and scanty. Upon the genitals, udder, and anus, 

 around the lips, and at the entrance of the auditory canal, it is 

 so soft and fine, that it assumes the nature of down. It is longest 

 and most luxuriant about the throttle, and within the ears; it 

 is coarsest and most capable of resistance upon the legs. Rarely, 

 and only in certain climates, are seen horses whose skins are 

 hairless; at least, they have no other pilous covering than a 

 light down, and that only perceptible on close inspection*. 

 Dogs of this description are not so uncommon. 



Direction. — The hair, generally speaking, takes an oblique 

 direction, either backwards, or downwards, from a medium line 

 that would cut the body into equal halves : in parts possessed of 

 much motion — as the throttle, axilla, flank, and bend of the 

 knee and hock — it is rough, elevated, and irregular in its course. 

 Now and then we meet with a horse in whom the coat is every- 

 where frizzled or curled. 



Structure. — Whatever may be the apparent nature of the hair 

 in various animals, it does not seem materially to differ in the 

 most remarkable circumstances connected with its structure. 

 A hair may be said to be composed of three parts ; the bulb, the 

 root, and the stem. The bulb consists of a transparent mem- 

 branous canal, of a cylindrical figure, perforated at either 

 extremity, that has its origin in the adipose and cellular tissue 

 underneath the skin, is received into one of the areolae or large pores 

 of the cutis, and terminates under the cuticle. The aperture 

 through the base is filled by a little conical papilla, from its 

 softness denominated the pulp of the hair, from which issues the 

 root, or the tender unhardened part of the stem, shooting up 

 through the bulb ; which appearances have led anatomists to 

 regard the stem as a secretion from the pulp. In the whiskers 

 and bristles of large animals, nerves as well as bloodvessels have 

 been traced into the bulb : to the latter we may assign the pro- 

 duction of an unctuous matter that anoints the stem, and gives that 

 sleekness and glossiness to the coat so remarkable in the Arabian 

 horse and his race ; a deficiency of which appears to be the pre- 

 vailing cause of the dry and stubborn coat of a horse out of 

 health, or of one that has suffered from exposure to cold. The 

 stem, as soon as it has emerged from the bulb, is said to receive, 

 in piercing the epidermis, a coating from it ; but, if it does so, 



* Mr. Sewell, in the course of his visit to the continental Veterinary 

 Schools, met with, at that of Berlin, a preparation of " the stuffed skin of 

 an African horse, which had not the slightest appearance of a single hair 

 upon it." — " It is of a dun colour, and is no doubt a particular £;-enus," he 

 adds. — In consequence of the skin beino- in a dried state, I suspect that the 

 dovva upon It had become imperceptible ; for I apprehend that the surface 

 of it was not perfectly hare during life. — Mr. Sewell's " Report." 



