This fourth attitude brings in another force of its own towards the
“make-up” of the dog’s patterns of hair. When lying with his head
supported on his paws the lower part of his chest is closely applied to
the upper or flexor surface of the fore legs, and the long-continued
pressure of the latter against the downward or normal streams of hair
on the chest leads to its slope being reversed. This is shown in two
wide patterns of the whorl, feathering and crest, Fig. 40, resembling
closely the corresponding patterns on the chest of a horse. I had
the opportunity many years ago of examining in the Capitol Museum at
Rome two fine sculptures of Molossian hounds, when these matters of
hair-arrangement were occupying my attention, and was much struck with
the fidelity with which the ancient sculptor reproduced such small
facts as the reversed areas of hair in a dog. Phiz himself was not
more true to Nature in his delineation of the projecting hairs on the
human eyebrows. It should be added that the reversed hair in question
occupies only that part of the chest which is in contact with the fore
limb. If one cannot reckon any animal pedometers, to the credit of the
domestic dog I think one may fairly and metaphorically say that his
hairy coat gives an accurate mould of his habits.
CHAPTER XIII.
HABITS AND HAIR OF PRIMATES.
In spite of the satires of Swift we may not cavil at the natural pride
which has led man, Homo Sapiens, as he also calls himself, to confer
boldly on himself, and his lineal ancestors at any rate, the name of
Primates. This large and highest group of hair-clad mammals includes
broadly and somewhat loosely lemurs, monkeys, apes and man. The last
has not lost his hairy endowment, though it is sadly curtailed, and it
is well to remember that, except on the palms of the hands, the soles
of the feet and the terminal rows of phalanges of fingers and toes, man
_is_ a hair-clad mammal. Shakespeare calls him “paragon of animals,”
and Huxley “head of the sentient world,” and no reasonable person will
attempt to improve upon such pregnant tributes to his greatness. I
desire only to adhere that _quâ animal_ he is the best of all for my
humble purpose of historian of the chequered course of the mammalian
hair, better even than the domestic horse. His hair varies from a coat
so fine as to need a lens for the discovery of the separate hairs, to a
truly Simian profusion of thick and long hair such as that of the Ainu
or hairy aborigines of Japan.
Hair and Habits of Man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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