In the Mongol, Malay, or Indian, as well as the Negro, it remains the same through all the stages of life, and it is only in extreme old age that it becomes gray or silvery white, or even falls off from any portion of the head. The coarse, stiff, black hair of the Indian child is that also of its parents—and a gray-headed or bald-headed Indian, except in some cases of extreme old age, is as rare perhaps as that of a bald-headed negro. But the child of the Caucasian, with perfectly white or flaxen hair, expands into the maiden with clustering ringlets of auburn or perhaps raven black, to be threaded with silver, in middle life perhaps, and though less common than with the other sex, a few years later it becomes again, as in early childhood, perfectly white. But there are no exceptions to the uniform color of the hair in other races. Such a thing as a flaxen-haired or a light-haired negro child never existed. There may be sometimes a slight approximation in this respect among Mongols, but the hair of the negro, except in some cases of extreme old age, remains absolutely the same at all periods, from the cradle to the grave. The elementary structure as shown by the elaborate microscopical observations of Mr. Peter A. Browne, of Philadelphia, differs as widely as the external or superficial modifications. The popular notion that it is wool instead of hair that covers the negro head is like many others, founded on a mere external resemblance, without any actual correspondence. It is hair, but _sui generis_, or rather specific and common to the negro alone, and however widely different from that of white people, it is no more so than any other quality or feature of the negro nature. The variations of this feature in the white race are almost unlimited. Hair dressing even has been elevated to the respectability of an art, if not to the dignity of a science. For many generations the kings of France kept _artistes_ of this character, who often received a salary equal to the ministers of the crown, and one of them, Oliver Le Dain, became in fact, if not in form, the actual ruler of the kingdom. But it was the princesses and ladies of the court that exalted this “art” to its highest pitch of extravagance and display. Marie Antoinette—one of the most unhappy women that ever lived—made it an important part of every day’s employment, and exacted the same labor from her attendants. Even in our own more sensible times, the Empress Eugenie changes the fashions in this respect almost every month, and the styles or modes of dressing their hair is an extravagant though amiable weakness of our own fair countrywomen. There is in fact no mere physical quality of the female so attractive, or that is capable of being rendered so charming, as the hair, and the elaborate dressings, the time and labor spent on its decoration, proceed as much perhaps from that delicate perception of the beautiful innate in woman as it does from female vanity or the love of display.