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 

 East 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. 



