230 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
power has had a twofold cause: first the hands, 
which, like the beak in birds, can reach to pretty 
well any part of the body, and, secondly, the 
custom of wearing clothes, which protect the skin 
and make the twitching unnecessary. 
The twitching power survives only in the face, 
and is almost confined to the forehead: but even 
there it is, with its slow up-and-down motion, a 
poor faculty compared with the rapid shaking or 
trembling motion other mammals are capable of, 
which they are able to confine to the exact spot 
on which an insect has alighted. In a few persons 
the power extends over the scalp, and I have 
heard of a man who could cause his hat to fall off, 
not with shaking his head, but simply by working 
the muscles of his forehead and scalp. Altogether, 
we may say that the faculty is weakest in man— 
that he is at one end of the pole, and the mole is 
at the other. The mole exists in the earth, moving 
in and covered with the dust he creates in digging, 
and he no doubt frees himself from it by means of 
his twitching muscle a hundred times a day. 
That this wonderful muscle can do anything 
more to increase his happiness I doubt, and this I 
say, because it is told in the sacred writings of the 
Kast that Buddha changed himself into a hare and 
jumped into a fire to roast himself to provide a 
meal for a hungry beggar, and that before jumping 
in, he—Buddha as a hare—shook himself three 
times so that none of the insects in his fur should 
perish with him. 
