THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 333 



by a well-defined layer of nucleated cells, internal to which numerous fatty particles 

 could be seen, contained apparently in cells occupying the interior of the vesicle. 

 Sections through the arrectores pilorum were numerous and many were seen attached 

 to their respective hair follicles in one, two, or three bundles. In sections immediately 

 below the rete Malpighi the sebaceous glands had disappeared, though the ducts were 

 present, whilst the hairs were rearranged usually in pairs, prior to their emergence 

 through the cuticle. 



Form and Structure. — A hair begins at the bottom of its follicle in a dilatation, 

 or bulb, which surmounts and surrounds the papilla. Its follicular length in the scalp 

 of the Negro averaged about 2 mm., in that of the Australian 2 '5 mm. ; after its emer- 

 gence, as the shaft of the hair, the length varied greatly in different races, but was 

 longer in the Leiotrichi than in the Ulotrichi. The shaft diminished in diameter 

 towards its free end, and, when uncut, it terminated in a point. 



In the course of time it became known that the shafts of the hairs were not 

 uniform in shape ; sometimes they were cylindriform, at others more or less flattened 

 at the sides. Fifty years ago Pruner Bey undertook an extensive investigation 

 into the form and breadth of the shaft in different races.* He made transverse 

 sections of hairs and examined them with the microscope. Similar observations were 

 subsequently conducted by M. TopiNARD.t It was thus recognised that some hairs, 

 when transversely divided, were circular in form or approximately so ; that others 

 again, more or less laterally compressed, were ovoid, elliptical, or kidney shaped. In 

 the compressed group the section had two diameters, one longer than the other, and 



a hair index was calculated by the formula — = : . On the basis that 



J 2 



the long diameter was equal to 100, the index of breadth was its relation to that 

 number. The hair index was low in the woolly-haired black races, in which the 

 section was laterally compressed, and higher in the straight-haired races, in which 

 the section approximated more to the circular. Topinard from his own observations 

 placed the yellow races in a group the hair index in which ranged from 79 to 90, 

 the black races in a group from 40 to 60, whilst in an intermediate group com- 

 prising Europeans, Polynesians, Laps, Fins and Australians, the index ranged from 

 62 to 74. 



Waldeyer in his treatise figured transverse sections through the hair of the 

 head in Europeans, a Negro, a Jap and a Jew : Friedenthal also gave sections of 

 hair in Europeans, Chinese, Papuans and in Togo negros. Fritsch in his great 

 Atlas represented sections of the hair of Europeans, Esquimaux, the Yellow races, 

 Polynesians, Australians, Papuans, Bushmen, Zulus and Negritos. 



Elaborate descriptions of the structure of the hair have been given in the best 

 histological text-books4 In the three illustrated special treatises on the hair 



* Mem. Soc. Anthropologic, t. ii. iii., 1863-64. t Elements d'Anthrop. generate, p. 278, Paris, 1885. 



I For example Kolliker, Handbuch der Gewebelehre des Menschen, 1889. 



TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. L. PART II. (NO. 10). 46 



