HUMAN HAIR. 299 



filling the buckets which he carries slung at each end of 

 a bamboo. 



Chinese barbers sell the hair of which they relieve 

 their customers for manure ; and a celebrated London 

 barber told Mr. Buckland that, though now obliged to burn 

 the cuttings of hair to get rid of them, when he was an 

 apprentice in a country town the sweepings of the shop 

 were allowed to him as his perquisite, and he was in the 

 habit of selling them at sixpence a bushel to a farmer, 

 who said that the land thus manured with hair required 

 nothing more for three years. In London, where people 

 keep their hair short, it would take a long time to collect 

 a bushel of clippings, but country customers often have 

 long locks to part with. 



Human hair, by-the-bye, is the strongest fibre known, 

 and a rope made of it was shown in the Japanese court 

 of the International Exhibition of 1862. 



The finest tresses used by hairdressers for making up 

 into plaits, wigs, &c., come from the sisterhoods, and Paris 

 seems to be the headquarters of the trade, as much as 

 i4o,ooolbs. being sold there in the year. Many years ago 

 pedlars, who went about the country in larger numbers 

 than they do now, were in the habit of buying up hair, 

 and have induced many a village lass to part with her 

 beautiful locks for a trifle. One girl we know of allowed 

 her luxuriant golden hair to be shorn off close to her head, 

 and was satisfied to receive in return a brass thimble and 

 a reel of cotton ! In these days, or rather a few years ago 

 such hair would have been worth a good deal. 



But to return to the subject of manure. Dried hop- 



