Q. Why have some women soft hair and some hard? A. 1. The hair hath proportion with the skin; of which some is hard, some thick, some subtle and soft, some gross; therefore, the hair which grows out of thick, gross skin, is thick and gross; that which groweth out of a subtle and fine skin, is fine and soft; when the pores are open, then cometh forth much humour, and therefore hard hair is engendered; and when the pores are strait, then there doth grow soft and fine hair. This doth evidently appear in men, because women have softer hair than they; for in women the pores are shut and strait, by reason of their coldness. 2. Because for the most part, choleric men have harder and thicker hair than others, by reason of their heat, and because their pores are always open, and therefore they have beards sooner than others. For this reason also, beasts that have hard hair are boldest, because such have proceeded from heat and choler, examples of which we have in the bear and the boar; and contrariwise, those beasts that have soft hair are fearful, because they are cold, as the hare and the hart. 3. From the climate where a man is born; because in hot regions hard and gross hair is engendered, as appears in the Ethiopians, and the contrary is the case is cold countries toward the north. Q. Why have some men curled hair, and some smooth? A. From the superior degree of heat in some men, which makes the hair curl and grow upward; this is proved by a man's having smooth hair when he goes into a hot bath, and it afterwards becomes curled. Therefore keepers of baths have often curled hair, as also Ethiopians and choleric men. But the cause of this smoothness, is the abundance of moist humours. Q. Why do women show ripeness by hair in their privy parts, and not elsewhere, but men in their breasts? A. Because in men and women there is abundance of humidity in that place, but most in women, as men have the mouth of the bladder in that place, where the urine is contained, of which the hair in the breast is engendered, and especially that about the navel. But of women in general, it is said, that the humidity of the bladder of the matrix, or womb, is joined and meeteth in that lower secret place, and therefore is dissolved and separated in that place into vapours and fumes, which are the cause of hair. And the like doth happen in other places, as in the hair under the arms. Q. Why have not women beards? A. Because they want heat; which is the case with some effeminate men, who are beardless from the same cause, to have complexions like women. Q. Why doth the hair grow on those that are hanged? A. Because their bodies are exposed to the sun, which, by its heat doth dissolve all moisture into the fume or vapour of which the hair doth grow.