Some attention must here be given to the supposed mode of formation of
individual patterns of hair, that is to say, their evolution. So here
one has to move among the fields of hypothesis, without which detached
facts of nature are useless to science.
The simplest pattern consists of a reversed area of hair appearing
between two adjoining streams; the more complex are whorls, featherings
and crests. No detailed description nor illustration of the former
are required, but I have prepared a diagram to illustrate the latter
(see p. 51.) (A) shows a whorl by itself; (B) a whorl, feathering and
crest. The arrows at the sides indicate the direction of the adjoining
hair-streams, the arrow in the centre of (B) the direction of the
reversed flow of hair.
An understanding of the dynamics of a hair-whorl leads quite simply
to that of a feathering and crest, for the two latter are only the
results of the further extension of the battle of forces concerned
in the whorl itself, and the end of their conflict. A whorl marks a
point in the stream of hair where two contending forces have come
into collision; on the one hand the centrifugal force of growth from
each hair-papilla, the rate of which has been described, and on the
other a certain centripetal dynamic force which may be either that
of localised _friction_, _pressure_, _gravitation_, or _muscular
traction_, directly opposing or divergent. Thus conceived a whorl may
be looked at symbolically as a written treaty between two nations,
one of which has defeated the other, and actually as a proof that the
contending centrifugal and centripetal forces are in the state called
the balance of power. But when the centripetal force of some habitual
action prevails over that of the original force of growth in the
hair, a whorl becomes extended into a feathering, and the length of
this, metaphorically speaking, corresponds with the duration of open
fighting, and terminated by a sharp crest when another and a decisive
battle has been fought. A crest may again be looked upon as a “treaty.”
The whole process pictured here shows a battle followed by a treaty or
truce (W) again a retreat (F) and a counter-attack (C) with a final
treaty and peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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