Januaby 14, 1887.] 



SCIENCE, 



33 



appearance. It is doubtless very efficient in the 

 distribution of the seeds, and accounts for the 

 wide dissemination of the species on the plains. 

 Professor Bessey notes a similar habit ia Baptisia 

 tinctoria on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and Pani- 

 cum capillare might also be cited as another 

 example." 



coarse, like that of the adult; and cases are known 

 where the larger part of the body has remained 

 through life covered with a thick coat of strong hair, 

 due, in reality, to an enormously large mother's 

 mark. A similar condition is foiind in the coarser 

 and more bushy growth of the heard from long-con- 

 tinued neuralgia or nerve-irritation. 



Yet another point of interest is the undoubted 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*t* Correspondents are requested to he as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



Atmospheric lines in the solar spectrum. 



Excuse me ; but in Professor Pickering's note on 

 p. 13 of Science for Jan. 7, have not the types twice 

 made him change M. Cornu's name to ' Mr. Conner '? 

 If so, you best know whether the misprint be worth 

 your correcting, though it was a very natural one for 

 the printer to make. James Edwaed Olivek. 



Ithaca, N.Y., Jan. 9. 



A hairy human family. 



The abnormal growth of hair, that has been not 

 rarely observed since antiqtiity in individuals of 

 different races of mankind, presents various points of 

 interest other than anthropological ones. As Pro- 

 fessor Mason has stated (Science, ix. No. 205), its 

 recently recognized cause is the persistence of the 

 prenatal downy hair, 'lanugo' as it is called, and its 

 rich growth through life; or rather, to speak more 

 accurately, the non-development of the hair-follicles 

 to adapt them to the growth of normal hair. This 

 persistence of the embryonal covering is most strik- 

 ingly shown, as a normal condition, in the ostrich 

 (Ratitae), Apteryx, and penguin, where the hair- 

 follicles, or, what is anatomically the same, the 

 feather-follicles, produce through life the soft downy 

 plumage of the chick only. This loss of the foetal 

 hair, which takes place with the general exfoliation 

 of the cuticle during the first year of life, is not 

 characteristic of man, but occurs in many other, 

 though not all, mammals. Wiedersheim (Vergl. 

 anat., 31) sees in this lanugo, and its abnormal de- 

 velopment in the ' hair-men,' a probable evidence of 

 an abundant covering of hair at some early period of 

 man's ancestry. 



The extent to which this abnormal growth of the 

 downy hair may reach will be better appreciated 

 from the pictiire, here given, of Teftichew (or Testi- 

 chew), the elder Russian ' dog-man,' than can be 

 from any description. The ' animal ' or dog-like ap- 

 pearance in this case is more striking than in any 

 other of which I have seen illustrations, though the 

 Amras family of the sixteenth century presented a 

 very similar aspect. In this family, the father, son, 

 and daughter were all covered, according to the paint- 

 ings and descriptions now extant, over the entire 

 body with long hair, with the exception of a space 

 below the eyes. 



In the notable case of Julia Pastrana of Mexico, a 

 most repulsive-looking person in her picture, the 

 hair of the head, forehead, and face, was coarse like 

 ordinary hair, and her cheeks and nose were nearly 

 bare. She died in 1860, in giving birth to a son, 

 who early showed similar hairiness on head and face. 

 The prenatal hair is not necessarily soft and downy. 

 Pathological conditions will cause it in places to be 



JULIA PASTRANA. 

 ADRIEN TESTICHEW. 



tendency to heredity which these abnormal cases 

 show. Thrice has the anomaly been known to be de- 

 veloped in the second generation ; and once, the 

 Birman family, in the third generation. On the 

 other hand, the precisely opposite condition, that of 

 absolute hairlessness from prenatal causes, not a few 

 cases of which have been observed among different 



