MUSCULAR ACTION AND DIRECTION OF HAIR 69 



horn of thick hair in his eyebrows, which he appeared to use as a 

 supplementary ringer to point to this or that object of his terrifying 

 attention. You may also see a man with a great drooping curtain 

 of hairs overhanging Iris eyes, half hiding the upper lids and eyes. 

 Another will show at the outer end of the eyebrows a bristling bush 

 of hairs turning upwards in the aggressive manner of Wilhelm II. 

 of evil memory, or of Mr. Roosevelt in former times. Again the 

 outer points of the eyebrow hairs may turn downwards like a 

 cavalry moustache, or the hairs may stand out at right angles as a 

 level shelf. The fashions of these " orbital moustaches " appear 

 to be as numerous as those of the upper lip. 



A Conflict of Forces. 



If the eyebrows are studied in the light of the three muscles 

 displayed in Fig. 20 it is seen to contain an interesting congeries 

 of small forces in conflict. (1) The frontalis moves the eyebrow 

 directly upwards. I had a friend once about seventy years old 

 who was a very vigorous, strong-willed man and he spoke with 

 decision and energy. It was most interesting to watch how his 

 frontalis muscle strongly and frequently contracted as he spoke 

 and drew up his eyebrows so that one might, as it were, measure 

 the strength of his expressed convictions by the rate of action of 

 his frontalis muscle ! (2) The corrugator draws the skin of the eye- 

 brow inwards to the middle line thus acting at a right angle to the 

 line of the frontalis. (3) The orbicularis in the upper part directly 

 opposes the action of the frontalis and in the lower acts " on its 

 own ' ' in closing the lower lid . This little spot is a Hill 60, destroyed 

 at the battle of Messines, and has been the scene of much fighting 

 throughout life, and it bears abiding witness in the twists and 

 curves of the long hairs to the severity of the struggles. These 

 actions of the three contending muscles are involuntary and of a 

 reflex character, and much employed in such habits as those of 

 knitting the brows or in elevating or depressing them, all this being 

 set going and controlled by cerebral action. Incidentally then the 

 preponderance of one or more of these actions over others, as shown 

 in the hair, is evidence, as far as it goes, of the disposition and 

 character of the possessor. So that between the wrinkles and 

 the twisted hairs of his brow the elderly man, and less so the woman, 

 carries about an engraved statement, for his friends or enemies 

 to read, of his natural disposition and his acquired habits, in a 

 limited field — his written character ! 



