I have little to add to the graphic evidence afforded by these pictures, each of which I observed noted and sketched as the bearers of them came before me during many years of a “Captain-Cuttle-like” disposal of some of my leisure. No clearer proof can be desired of the view here advanced, that habit or habitual muscular action, and jolting, is the cause of the varied patterns in this field, and that according to the Law of Parcimony no other is required, this canon of Occam being expressed more succinctly--_Neither more, nor more onerous causes are to be assumed than are necessary to account for the phenomena_. CHAPTER VIII. CAN MUSCULAR ACTION CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF HAIR IN THE INDIVIDUAL? It might seem unnecessary to most persons who are good enough to follow this inquiry that the question asked above should receive an explicit answer. We all know, of course, how a man’s hair is said to stand on end in excessive states of horror or rage, and how a short-haired terrier’s back bristles at the sight of certain foes. But it is not so simple a matter to show that the direction of the hair is permanently changed. I submit that the persons I mention are right in their opinion for this work contains evidence throughout that muscular action beneath the skin is the efficient cause in many regions of the formation of hair patterns. But like Kirkpatrick when Bruce struck down the Red Comyn we had best “make sicker,” and give as much evidence of the affirmative question as any critic can demand. Hairs of Human Eyebrows. As in the previous chapter I chose an open and plain field for the evidence bearing on the formation of whorls and the like, so here I turn to one still more clear for him who runs to read. In these days old men are of less account than in earlier and simpler times, but I claim to have found “a new use for old men” as I had almost thought of calling this chapter. In this somewhat neglected group we have an almost unlimited number of specimens for examination, and in their eyebrows they furnish a valuable field for tracing some striking results of underlying muscular traction.