MUSCULAR ACTION AND DIRECTION OF HAIR 67 



Another witness to the scientific facts of the frequent presence 

 of these hairs on the eyebrows of elderly men, and the rarity of 

 them in those of women, is the dear friend of our youth, our friend 

 even to hoar hairs, the Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear. Here 

 in 110 vivid drawings of several hundred characters, each of them 

 sketched with a few bold strokes, is inscribed again and again this 

 peculiar feature. Look at the " Old man with a nose," the " Old 

 Man of th'Abruzzi," the " Old man of Melrose," the " Old man of 

 Calcutta," the " Old Person of Anerley," the " Old Person of 

 Chester," all with strange and striking bushes of long hairs standing 

 out from their brows. Again see how hardly one of the female 

 characters shows a trace of it even in that most truculent " Grand- 

 mother of the Young Person of Smyrna " who threatened to burn 

 her, though her vertical wrinkles are formidable, or in the remarkable 

 face of the wife of the " Old Man of Peru." The " Old Lady of 

 Prague " shows it in a moderate degree, Support of this kind 

 may be trivial, and so will the opposing counsel say is that of a 

 burglar's finger-prints, but, qua evidence, it is as strong as that 

 which commits the criminal to a prison on this modern proof. 

 No one can suppose that Phiz and Lear fifty or sixty years ago 

 had a prophetic and treacherous insight into the harmless labours 

 of a man in the year 1920 who would exploit their labours to the 

 advantage of his hypothesis, and that they faked their caricatures 

 for such a purpose. This is the only alternative line for Sergeant 

 Buzfuz to take unless he acknowledge the facts to be facts, aud 

 betake himself to abuse of the plaintiff's attorney. 



Eyebrows Interpreted by Wrinkles. 



When one comes to the interpretation of the curious shapes 

 taken by these hairs one is not left to inference, for Nature has 

 put some indelible stamps on the forehead and round the orbits of 

 the men examined. These are wrinkles which have been long in 

 preparation and only begin to show themselves fully when the 

 L " evil days " have come, in the 'fifties, 'sixties and 'seventies. 



I will describe the wrinkles first, and then their results, with 

 examples, in the numerous fashions of the hairs. Wrinkles are of 

 two kinds, pathological and physiological, in other words the 

 former are the results of degeneration and wasting of the subcutan- 

 eous fat and loss of its normal elasticity, and are found in the faces 

 of nearly all men and women, with advancing age, and they are 

 the subject of much distress in the fair sex and a good deal of 

 " beauty doctoring." The latter are the result of long -continued 

 and repeated action of certain small muscles. The former are 



