CHAPTER XIII. 



HABITS AND HAIR OF PRIMATES. 



In spite of the satires of Swift we may not cavil at the natural 

 pride which has led man, Homo Sapiens, as he also calls himself, 

 to confer boldly on himself, and his lineal ancestors at any rate, 

 the name of Primates. This large and highest group of hair-clad 

 mammals includes broadly and somewhat loosely lemurs, monkeys, 

 apes and man. The last has not lost his hairy endowment, though 

 it is sadly curtailed, and it is well to remember that, except on the 

 palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the terminal rows of 

 phalanges of fingers and toes, man is a hair-clad mammal. Shake- 

 speare calls him " paragon of animals," and Huxley " head of the 

 sentient world," and no reasonable person will attempt to improve 

 upon such pregnant tributes to his greatness. I desire only to 

 adhere that qua animal he is the best of all for my humble purpose 

 of historian of the chequered course of the mammalian hair, 

 better even than the domestic horse. His hair varies from a coat 

 so fine as to need a lens for the discovery of the separate hairs, 

 to a truly Simian profusion of thick and long hair such as that of 

 the Ainu or hairy aborigines of Japan. 



Hair and Habits of Man. 



The streams of his hair demonstrate two important facts 

 about man : first what he has been ; secondly what he has done, 

 that is to say, his ancestry and habits of life, through an immense 

 stretch of time. These stories in hair are the culmination of a 

 large number of characters inherited and acquired, and their study 

 in two selected regions of lemurs, apes and man will be pursued in 

 this chapter on the lines which I laid down in Chapter VI. 

 I have thought it well not to give any connected account of the 

 rest of his hairy covering so as to concentrate attention on the 

 two simplest and most striking regions. The charts of his hair- 

 streams and those of the lemur and ape have been described with 

 sufficient fulness elsewhere, * and no cartographer has hitherto 

 sought to improve upon them. 



1 Direction of Hair in Animals and Man. 



