Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1942-10-18

one grown by Zach T. Wilcox. of Nevada
who got mad at dull razor and didn't shave
for Al years just to get even with it.
In the days of Peter the Great boards were
so popular in Russia that that ingenious mon
arch hit upon the novel method of raising more
revenue by putting tax on whiskers-and to
make sure nobody cheated he compelled his
subjects to wear their tax receipts attached to
their chin foliage.
THE hairs of the head are numbered"
but those on top of the skull, where all per-
sons wish to keep them, have mostly be-
come back numbers by the time a man
reaches the age of three score and ten Not
so those Of the beard which even Nature
seems to hold in special reverence. Methu-
selah may have been bald as an egg when
he finally came to the end of his long count
yet it is safe to say that his beard though
white, was luxuriant as in middle age
The hairs Of the face resist mans at
tempts to exterminate them. Plucking them
out seems only to stimulate the growth of
new hair follicles or the rebirth of new
hairs from the old ones. 1t was revealed
by scientific experiments published in the
Journal of the American Medical Associa-
ton, that shaved whskers grow more rapidly
The normal growth is about one-quarter to
one-half an inch per month. Facial hair seldom
shoots out straight from the skin but at
various angles sometimes almost flat
What is the stuff that hairs are made of?
Did you ever see whiskers on fish? Prob
ably not-but you have beheld the raw ma
terial for them. Nature prodigal and spend
thrift in some matters, Is a conservative I'm
others. Fish, being cold-blooded creatures
do not bother to wear overcoats to keen
warm. When some fish decided to take a
chance at living on dry land, those that re-
manned cold-blooded continued to go about
naked and unashamed like toads and snakes
But when some Of the pioneers evolved
into warm-blooded animals, clothing had to
be provided. With the birds it was feathers
while the four-footed ones, including mans
ancestors, went in for hair. In both cases
Nature made the new suits out of cast-off
material, the scales of the fish----The- Same
stnff also did for other things, such as finger
and toenails.
The worlds leading beard-fancier TODAY.
seems to be the Sikh, of India, an offshoot
of the Hindu Brahman.
Here again it is the proud emblem of
military superiority. He. or rather his an
cestors grew their boards in defiance of the
great Mogul conquerors of India, some CEN
turies ago. There are about $500, 900 of these
doughty warriors who pay as much atten-
ton to their boards as any woman does to
her hair
AS one or MS regular. personal chores the
sikh bathes his beloved beard in curds of milk
from sacred cows After it has been carefully
dried he annoints it with perfumed oils.
Some of the longest boards on record have
been grown by Japs, probably because of some
urgent need to prove to themselves that THEY'RE
really he-men. In fact, the custom became
so popular in pre-Pearl Harbor days that a
Of long-beards was held. with r.
year-old Naojiro Kato's seven-foot beard win
ming him the championship But no doubt all
such luxuriant spinach has now been trimmed
down to the toothbrush or Aryan pattern.