Martinsburg Gazette

NATURAL USES OF HAIR

That hair serves an important purpose in the animal economy, we have evidence in its almost universal distribution of the mammiferous class of animals ; and if we admit the analogy between the feather and the hair among all warm-blooded animals, additional evidence is obtained in the perfection of its structure, and again in its early appearance in the progress of development in the young. As a bad conductor of heat, it tends to preserve the warmth of the body ; and in man it would have that effect upon the head, and serve to equalize the temperature of the brain. It is also a medium of defence against external irritants, as the heat of the sun's rays, and the bites of insects, and against injuries inflicted with violence. Of special purposes fulfilled by the hairs, we have instances in the eye-brows and eyelids, which are beautifully adapted for the defence of the organs of vision; in the small hairs which grow in the apertures of the nostrils. and serve as guardians to the delicate membrane of the nose; and in similar hairs in the ear-tubes, which defend those cavities from the intrusion of insects.— Wilson on the Skin