Amongst the various cosmetics recommended by the adventurer for the dressing room, it must be admitted that none seems more harmless than those which profess to give a fine curl to the hair. But to assert that any liquid will, of itself, give a permanent or temporary curl to the hair is fallacious; though it is true that the application of a weak soap lye, or a solution of caustic potash, will render the hair more susceptible of adopting the artificial curl given by putting it into papers. But then it must be recollected that the effect occasioned by soap lye or potash is only produced by a complete alteration of the organic structure of the hair, superinducing a slow but certain destruction of that beautiful ornament of the human head. This effect may not be immediately observed, either in youth or in advanced life; but it is certain and inevitable. Equally destructive are the various liquid dyes so loudly boasted of, and extensively advertised, by quacks for colouring the hair; some of them, indeed, do produce the effect proposed, particularly the black dyes; but they are all INJURIOUS, especially the black, as their basis consists always of nitrate of silver, (that is, silver dissolved in nitric acid or aqua-fortis) or lunar caustic when in a dry state; but the operation is destructive of the hair, as must be evident to any one who has seen the effect of caustic on warts on the skin. It has been well said that if we wish to save our hair, we must first save our money, by abstaining from the whole list of those puffed and unprincipled recipes and nostrums that stare us in the face in every newspaper, and in almost every shop-window. The folly of giving credence to any of the impudent and disgraceful impostures for the pretended power of certain ingredients to change the colour of the hair, must, as the author of THE TOILETTE COMPANION observes, be evident to every person when he is told that the hair depends on a peculiar secretion, and that, when that secretion ceases, which it does from several causes, as grief, fright, ill health, great mental exertion, age, &c. the hair becomes grey: “for Nature, like a provident mother, when she feels the powers of life impaired or decaying, exerts all her energies to support and preserve the vital organs, and can no longer, from her limited means, supply the outposts and ornamental parts of the system as before, which therefore suffer and are sacrificed.”