Man differs conspicuously from all the other primates in being almost
naked. But a few short straggling hairs are found over the greater part
of the body in the man, and fine down on that of the woman. The
different races differ much in hairiness; and in the individuals of the
same race the hairs are highly variable, not only in abundance, but
likewise in position: thus in some Europeans the shoulders are quite
naked, whilst in others they bear thick tufts of hair. (38. Eschricht,
Uber die Richtung der Haare am menschlichen Korper, Muller s Archiv
fur Anat. und Phys. 1837, s. 47. I shall often have to refer to this
very curious paper.) There can be little doubt that the hairs 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. (39. Paget, Lectures on Surgical
Pathology, 1853, vol. i. p. 71.)
I am informed by Sir James Paget that often several members of a family
have a few hairs in their eyebrows much longer than the others; so that
even this slight peculiarity seems to be inherited. These hairs, too,
seem to have their representatives; for in the chimpanzee, and in
certain species of Macacus, there are scattered hairs of considerable
length rising from the naked skin above the eyes, and corresponding to
our eyebrows; similar long hairs project from the hairy covering of the
superciliary ridges in some baboons.
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
(40. Eschricht, ibid. s. 40, 47.) on a female foetus; but this is not
so surprising a circumstance as it may at first appear, 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 the soles of the feet are quite
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