Chap I. 
RUDIMENTS. 
25 
thus scattered over the body are the rudiments of the 
uniform hairy coat of the lower animals. This view 
is rendered all the more probable, as it is known that 
fine, short, and pale-coloured hairs on the limbs and 
other parts of the body occasionally become developed 
into “ thickset, long, and rather coarse dark hairs,” 
when abnormally nourished near old-standing inflamed 
surfaces . 89 
I am informed by Mr. Paget that persons belonging 
to the same family often have a few hairs in their eye- 
brows much longer than the others; so* that this slight 
peculiarity seems to be inherited. These hairs appa- 
rently represent the vibrissee, which are used as organs 
of touch by many of the lower animals. In a young* 
chimpanzee I observed that a few upright, rather long, 
hairs, projected above the eyes, where the true eyebrows* 
if present, would have stood. 
The fine wool-like hair, or so-called lanugo, with 
which the human foetus during the sixth month is 
thickly covered, offers a more curious case. It is first 
developed, during the fifth month, on the eyebrows and 
face, and especially round the mouth, where it is much 
longer than that on the head. A moustache of this kind 
was observed by Eschricht 30 on a female foetus ; but this 
is not so surprising a circumstance as it may at first ap- 
pear, for the two sexes generally resemble each other in 
all external characters during an early period of growth. 
The direction and arrangement of the hairs on all parts 
of the foetal body are the same as in the adult, but are 
subject to much variability. The whole surface, including 
even the forehead and ears, is thus thickly clothed ; but 
it is a significant fact that the palms of the hands and 
29 Paget, Lectures on Surgical Pathology/ 1853, vol. i. p. 71. 
30 Eschricht, ibid. s. 40, 47. 
