And we are told this does actually take place; that in health the hair is glossy, brilliant, and rich in hue; in ill health dry, faded, blank, and withered. But if this be so, and the connection between the blood and fluids of the hair be thus intimate, how comes it that partial changes of colour--this paleness of hue, and loss of brilliancy; and on the other hand, increased depth of colour consequent on renewed health--are not common phenomena and familiar to every one? Doubtless, we have still much to learn of the secrets of Nature, and there is yet something wanting to complete the revelations of the microscope, and the teachings of physiologists respecting the hair. The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are the only portions of the skin unfurnished with hairs. Their length and thickness varies considerably, from the softest down which is scarcely visible, to the long hair of the scalp and beard. The estimated thickness of a hair of the head is one-tenth of a line. Observations seem to show that flaxen is the finest, and black the coarsest hair. In females the hair of the head ordinarily measures from twenty to thirty inches, but in some instances it attains a much greater length; and mention is made of ladies whose hair has been two yards long and reached to the ground when they stood erect. The beard has been known to grow to the enormous length of nine feet: the portrait of a carpenter with a beard of this length, is preserved at Eidam; when at work he was obliged to pack it up in a bag. We are told the Burgomeister Hans Steiningen was thrown down and killed by treading on his long beard on the staircase leading to the council-chamber of Brunn. The long beard of John Mayo, a painter in Germany, is matter of history; he used to untie it in the presence of Charles V., who laughed heartily on seeing it blown about in the faces of the courtiers. Busbequius saw at Constantinople a janissary with such a quantity of hair on his head that a musket-ball would not penetrate it: we suspect there was some legerdemain in this case, and that the celebrated wizard was anticipated in his gun trick by some two hundred years or more. Some commentators have endeavoured to determine the weight of Absalom’s long and beautiful hair, but they differ widely in their computation; we are told that when its inconvenient length compelled him at times to cut it off it was found to weigh 200 shekels, which Geddes estimates at 112 ounces, and Clarke at 7-1/2 ounces--a conclusion in which nothing is concluded. Seven to eight ounces is held to be about the average weight of a lady’s tresses. With those who shave the beard its growth is said to be at the rate of six and a half inches per annum, so that in forty years a man must have cut off rather more than twenty feet of beard.