Traces of Animal Habits 155 
found in‘ many other ruminants, such as antelopes and oxen, and it reminds one very 
much of the peculiar break in the stream of hair in the mane of the Giraffe, which 
will be referred to in the second part of this article. Such a modification of the 
hair-slope is not causeless, accidental, or without meaning, whether the meaning of it 
be important or otherwise. There are two alternative views one might take as to its 
causation. It might be the result of a strong oft-repeated action of the fly-shaker 
muscle so common and useful in ungulates. This muscle, by very constant action, is 
quite capable of causing a reversal of the “set” of the hairs in the skin over it. 
One has only to watch on a hot day the almost ceaseless action of this muscle in 
cows as they browse or le ruminating to see how this could come to pass. But a 
more probable view of the production of this curious reversed area of hair is that the 
attitude so largely adopted by ruminants in their long hours of cropping grass, which 
they are to digest subsequently in their peculiar way, so stretches the skin of the 
back of the neck down to the withers that the hairs over it are reversed. 
A second mark of its habits is seen on the pectoral region of the fallow deer. 
Here, on each side of the sternal region and extending forwards from the flexure 
of the shoulder-joint, is a symmetrical area of reversed hair, oval in shape, and 
corresponding exactly to the region where the surfaces of the chest and the fore-lim)h 
are brought in contact in the habitual 
ungulate attitude of rest. In its own 
way this phenomenon marks as clearly 
the great length of time spent by the 
fallow deer in chewing the cud, as the 
former one on the neck pointed to the 
time occupied in browsing. 
Numerous instances might be chosen 
for description, but space will allow of 
only one more, and that from the body 
of Man. Man is far from being the 
hairless creature which he is generally 
supposed to be. Hardly an inch of his 
skin is not clothed with fine hair visible 
with or without a lens. On his back the 
hair-streams pass in a remarkable direc- 
tion, from the sides upwards towards the 
spine, making with the long axis of the 
vertebral column an angle of about 459. 
Not one of the great groups of hai-clad 
mammals shows a direction of the hair on 
its back anything like this. A mechanical 
explanation is readily afforded by man’s 
habitual or prevailing attitude in sleep, 
which is that of lying on one side or the 
other, with his head raised on a pillow. 
A slight reflection on the mechanics of 
the matter shows that there are present 
the very conditions calculated to produce 
this unique hair-slope on this part of 
man’s body. It is only one of many 
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BACK VIEW OF TRUNK AND UPPER EXTREMITins ‘simular new departures in hair-slope con 
OF MAN, fined to the human species, 
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