Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/271

 finest hair occurs in children, especially those who are scrofulous. The difference is considerable. The diameter of some hairs is twelve or thirteen times greater than that of others.

It is a vain task, one might suppose, to set to work to number the hairs of the head. "As the hairs of the head, or the sands of the sea in number," is a favorite Oriental metaphor to express an innumerable host. Yet there are those who have attempted this incredible labor. Nor is it a very great task to make some approximation. Thus we know there are one hundred and twenty square inches covered with hair, on a head of average size. Take a single square inch, where the hairs seem of an average thickness, and count how many there are. It can be done in a short time. The result will be, in a healthy scalp, from eight hundred to twelve hundred, say in round numbers one thousand. Multiply this by one hundred and twenty, and we have one hundred and twenty thousand as the average number of hairs on the head.

In the early ages the Frankish kings used to pluck a single hair and bestow it on one of their attendants as a (cheap and) significant token of their favor. Few of them but might have so rewarded every one of their subjects without materially thinning the covering which nature had given their heads.

The fine short hairs over the body are not nearly so thick. For instance, since writing the last paragraph,