CHAPTER VIII. 



CAN MUSCULAR ACTION CHANGE THE DIRECTION 

 OF HAIR IN THE INDIVIDUAL ? 



It might seem unnecessary to most persons who are good enough 

 to follow this inquiry that the question asked above should receive 

 an explicit answer. We all know, of course, how a man's hair is 

 said to stand on end in excessive states of horror or rage, and how 

 a short-haired terrier's hack bristles at the sight of certain foes. 

 But it is not so simple a matter to show that the direction of the 

 hair is permanently changed. I submit that the persons I mention 

 are right in their opinion for this work contains evidence throughout 

 that muscular action beneath the skin is the efficient cause in many 

 regions of the formation of hair patterns. But like Kirkpatrick 

 when Bruce struck down the Red Comyn we had best " make sicker," 

 and give as much evidence of the affirmative question as any 

 critic can demand. 



Hairs of Human Eyebrows. 



As in the previous chapter I chose an open and plain field for 

 the evidence bearing on the formation of whorls and the like, 

 so here I turn to one still more clear for him who runs to read. 

 In these days old men are of less account than in earlier and simpler 

 times, but I claim to have found " a new use for old men " as I 

 had almost thought of calling this chapter. In this somewhat 

 neglected group we have an almost unlimited number of specimens 

 for examination, and in their eyebrows they furnish a valuable 

 field for tracing some striking results of underlying muscular 

 traction. 



Darwin made one of his few mistakes when he included among 

 rudimentary and inherited structures 1 those few long hairs which 

 are often seen in the eyebrows of man, looking upon them as re- 

 presentatives of those found in some species of macacus and the 

 chimpanzee. That great and modest man was, I am sure, not in 

 the habit of making much use of the looking-glass — not more than 

 women who, as we know, rarely do such a thing. But if he did 



1 Descent of Man, p. 19. 



