Everrsopy knows that a very large trade is done in human hair, and that all the countries in the world are rave sacked for material to supplement the grudging allowance of what St. Paul calls a woman's glory which Nature deals out to thousands of European and American beauties. We have our own opinion about the ethics of false hair, but we shall keep it to ourselves. Unimpeachable authority is dead against us, Mra, Haweis, in her Art of Beauly, which, as written by a clerical lady, must be a moral work, denies distinctly anybody's right to condemn wholly the practice of wearing false hair. " There are cases," she says, perhaps with special consideration for elderly young ladies anxious to marry, "in ich a few bands of extra tresses are more than an improvement—they are even a necessity." Yet more than ove of the early Fathers, to say nothing of the of the English church, had quite different to sny about artificial displays of purchased hair. No matter for that, Mrs. Haweis silences us. Sensation stories used to be told about bundles furtively conveyed out of fever hospitals and workhouse mortuaries, without, however, any effect that we know of in lessening the demand. Every fair one trasted to her luck, and if she thought of the matter at all, persuaded herself that her borrowed locks had been ravished from some impecunious peasant girl anxious exchange ber golden tresses for gold in ite more vulgar form. It is sufficiently probable that the processes of cleansing to which hair is subjected before being made up into plaits, chignons and coronets, are so thorough as to make the original source of the supply immaterial. At all events, Indies chew themselves pretty well above prejudice, provided colour, texture and form please their eyes. But workers in hair are able to tell by the appearance and smell of any sample whether or not it has been cut from the dead or the living, and whether a living person from whom it was out was or was not the subject of fever. 'The hair derived from fever hospitals or cut after death is withered, and lacks certain perfume which' characterises healthy hair. Thus a chance handful of hair, with all its innocent appearance, tells to the educated eye and nose many tales about its rightful owner. Tt is even said that the hair of an hysterical woman emits @ recognisable smell at the approach of each attack and during the paroxysm, and that this native odour is preserved after the hair is cut off. Moreover the nationality of a sample can in some cases be ascerlaived. Chinese hair has always faint musk-like smell which is not due to the use of oils or washes, for it persists after chemical treatment. By strong transmitted light each Chin hair has red tinge, and the cross section instead of being kidney shaped as among Enuropeaus, is polygonal or, to uso the trade term, square.
We ought perhaps to have bottled up this interesting and perfectly new fact about China until we could develope it into a paper for the Asiatic Society. Bat the mischief is done, and past recall, We absolve ourselves with the thought that more people will hear of it, in these columns than would be likely to hear it in the select circle of attendants at the mystic gatherings of the local learned society.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.