3] 8 HISTORY OF 



tasily the assertion. Of all parts or appendages of the body, 

 the hair is that which is found most different, in different cli- 

 mates; and often not only contributes to mark the country, but 

 also the disposition of the man. It is in general thickest where 

 the constitution is strongest ; and more glossy and beautiful, 

 where the health is most permanent. The ancients held the 

 hair to be a sort of excrement, produced like the nails ; the part 

 next the root pushing out that immediately contiguous. But 

 the moderns have found that every hair may be truly said to live, 

 to receive nutriment, to fill and distend itself, like the other parts 

 of the body. The roots, they observe, do not turn gray sooner 

 than the extremities, but the whole hair changes colour at once ; 

 and we have many instances of persons who have grown gray 

 in one night's time.' Each hair, if viewed with a microscope, 

 is found to consist of five or six lesser ones, all wrapped up in 

 one common covering ; it appears knotted, like some sorts of 

 grass, and sends forth branches at the joints. It is bulbous at 

 the root, by which it imbibes its moistiu-e from the body: 

 and it is split at the points ; so that a single hair, at its end, 

 resembles a brush. Whatever be the size or the shape of 

 the pore, through which the hair issues, it accommodates itself 

 to the same ; being either thick, as they are large ; small, as 

 they are less ; round, triangular, and variously formed, as the 

 pores happen to be various. The hair takes its colour from the 

 juices flowing through it, and it is found that this colour differs 

 in different tribes and races of people. The Americans, and 

 the Asiatics, have their hair black, thick, straight, and shining. 

 The inhabitants of the torrid climates of Africa have it black, 

 short, and woolly. The people of Scandinavia have it red, long, 

 and curled ; and those of our own and the neighbouring coun- 

 tries, are found with hair of various colours. However, it is 

 supposed by many, that every man resembles in his disposition 

 the inhabitants of those countries whom he resembles in the 

 colour and the nature of his hair : so that the black are said, like 

 the Asiatics, to be grave and acute ; the red, like the Gothic 

 nations, to be choleric and bold. However this may be, the 

 length and the strength of the hair is a general mark of a good 



1 Blr Buffon says, that tlic hair bi'j,'in8 to grow gray at the points ; but tlie 

 (act is otherwise. 



