34 



have referred to as acting on it there. The great differences 

 of this special area in different monkeys is rather striking. 

 Monkeys, as do apes and man, present very often a whorl or 

 vortex on the parietal or other region of the head. The 

 position of it differs a good deal, and there are several 

 interesting modifications of the hair-slope on the heads of 

 the monkeys, Old World and New World, the latter being the 

 more simple of the two groups in every respect. 



Anthropoid apes, such as gorilla/chimpanzee, and orang, 

 have long, but somewhat scanty hair, and in keeping with 

 their nearly upright preponderating attitude the direction of 

 the hair approaches closely the vertical line on trunk and 

 limbs. The gibbons have still thicker and long hair, and 

 show very few modifications. On the forearm of all these 

 the slope of hair especially on the extensor surface is more 

 or less backwards, i.e., towards the elbow. 



Man. The hair-slope on man's body is exceedingly varied. 

 It is indeed much more so than of any lower animal that I 

 have been able to find, and this is in spite of the fact that 

 his hairy covering in various or most regions consists of fine 

 short hairs, sometimes hardly visible without a lens. It 

 may be well to state that the whole of man's body is covered 

 with hair, except the palms of the hands and soles of the 

 feet, and the dorsal surface of the two terminal phalanges on 

 each of the digits of head and foot. The hair of man also 

 slopes in a fixed direction on each region of the body, and 

 only on the edges of the eyelids, where it forms the eyelashes, 

 is it vertical to the surface. The number of hairs on a 

 human skin has been estimated to be about one-third of a 

 million. 



It would be impossible to do more than allude to the 

 more prominent variations on man's body. It may be said, 

 broadly speaking, that the typical direction of hair from 

 cephalic to caudel end of trunk, and proximal to distal end 

 of limb is much more departed from than in any other 

 animal. The following points may be selected for mention. 



First, the back of the head and tipper part of the neck shows 

 the familiar divergence of type whereby the stream of hair 

 coming from the back of the head passes downwards in one 

 of two very different directions till it merges with the 

 streams of neck or spine. In the more frequent one it falls 

 downwards, and at the side of the middle line diverges from 



