HAIR, small filaments issuing out of the pores of the skins of animals, and serving most of them as a tegument or covering.

Though the external surface of the body is the natural place of hairs, we have instances of these being found also on the internal surface. Amatus Lusitanus mentions a person who had hair upon his tongue. Pliny and Valerius Maximus assure us that the heart of Aristomenes the Messenian was hairy. Caelius Rhodiginus relates the same of Hermogenes the rhetorician; and Plutarch, of Leonidas the Spartan. Hippocrates is of opinion, that the glandular parts are the most subject to hair; but bundles of hair have been found in the muscular parts of beef, and in such parts of the human body as are equally firm.

By the Jews the hair was worn naturally long, just as it grew; but the priests had theirs cut every fortnight whilst they were in waiting at the temple; they made use of no razors, however, but of scissors only. The Nazarites, whilst their vow continued, were forbidden to touch their heads with a razor. The hair of both Jewish and Grecian women engaged a principal share of their attention. and the Roman ladies seem to have been no less curious respecting theirs. They generally wore it long, and dressed it in a variety of ways, bedecking it with gold, silver, pearls, and other ornaments. On the contrary, the men amongst the Greeks and Romans, and amongst the Jews at a later period, wore their hair short, as may be collected from books, medals, statues, and other monuments or remains. This formed a principal distinction in dress between the sexes. Amongst the Greeks, both sexes, a few days before marriage, cut off and consecrated their hair as an offering to their favourite deities. It was also customary amongst them to hang the hair of the dead on the doors of their houses previous to interment. They likewise, when mourning for their deceased relations or friends, tore, cut off, and sometimes shaved their hair, which they laid upon the corpse, or threw into the pile, to be consumed along with the body. The ancients imagined that no person could die till a lock of hair was cut off; and this act they supposed was. performed by the invisible hand of death, or some other messenger of the gods. The hair, thus cut off, it was supposed, consecrated the person to the infernal deities, under whose jurisdiction the dead were supposed to be placed. It was a sort of first fruits, which sanctified the whole. Whatever was the fashion with respect to the hair in the Grecian states, slaves were forbidden to imitate the freemen. The hair of the slaves was always cut in a particular manner, which they no longer retained after they procured their freedom.

It was esteemed a distinguished honour amongst the ancient Gauls to have long hair, and hence came the appellation Gallia Comata. For this reason Julius Caesar, upon subduing the Gauls, made them cut off their hair as a token of submission. It was with a view to this, that those who afterwards quitted the world to go and live in cloisters had their hair shaven off, to show that they bade adieu to all earthly ornaments, and made a vow of perpetual subjection to their superiors.

Gregory of Tours assures us, that in the royal family of France it was a long time the peculiar mark and privilege of kings and princes of the blood to wear long hair, artfully dressed and curled, every body else being obliged to be polled, or cut round, in token of inferiority and obedience. Some writers assure us, that there were different cuts for all the different qualities and conditions; from the prince who wore it at full length, to the slave or villein who was quite crept. To cut off the hair of a son of France, under the first race of kings, was to declare him excluded from the right of succeeding to the crown, and reduced to the condition of a subject.

In the eighth century it was the custom of people of quality to have their children’s hair cut the first time by persons they had a particular honour and esteem for, and who, in virtue of this ceremony, were reputed as a sort of spiritual parents or godfathers. This practice appears to have been more ancient, inasmuch as we read that Constantine sent to the pope the hair of his son Heraclius, as a token that he desired him to be his adoptive father.

The parade of long hair became still more and more obnoxious in the progress of Christianity, as something utterly inconsistent with the profession of persons who bore the cross. Hence numerous injunctions and canons to the contrary were published. Pope Anicetus is commonly supposed to have been the first who forbade the clergy to wear long hair; but the prohibition is of older standing in the churches of the East, and the letter in which the decree in question is written is of a much later date than this pope. The clerical tonsure is, according to Isidore, of apostolical institution.

Long hair was anciently held so odious, that there is a canon still extant of the year 1096, importing, that such as wore long hair should be excluded from church whilst living, and not be prayed for when dead. There is a furious declamation of Luitprand against the Emperor Phocas, for wearing long hair, after the manner of the emperors of the East; excepting Theophilas, who being bald, enjoined all his subjects to shave their heads.

The French historians and antiquaries have been very exact in recording the capillary honours of their several kings. Charlemagne wore his hair very short, his son shorter, Charles the Bald had none at all. Under Hugh Capet it began to appear again; but this the ecclesiastics took in dudgeon, and excommunicated all who let their hair grow. Peter Lombard expostulated so warmly with Charles the Young on the subject, that the latter cut off his hair, and his successors for some generations wore it very short. A professor of Utrecht, in 1650, wrote expressly on the question, whether it be lawful for men to wear long hair; and concluded in favour of the negative. Another divine, named Reves, who had written in support of the affirmative, replied to him.

The ancient Britons were extremely proud of the length and beauty of their hair, and they were at much pains in dressing and adorning their heads. Some of them carried their fondness for and admiration of their hair to an extravagant height. It is said to have been the last and most earnest request of a young warrior, who had been taken prisoner and condemned to be beheaded, that no slave might be permitted to touch his hair, which was remarkably long and beautiful, and that it might not be stained with his blood. Not contented with the natural colour of their hair, which was commonly fair or yellow, they made use of certain washes to render it still brighter. One of these washes was a composition of lime, the ashes of certain vegetables, and tallow. They also employed various arts to make the hair of their heads grow thick and long; which, last was not only esteemed a great beauty, but was considered as a mark of dignity and noble birth. Boadicea, queen of the Iceoi, is described by Dio as having long hair, flowing over her shoulders, and reaching down below the middle of her back. The Britons shaved all their beards except their upper lips; the hair of which they, as well as the Gauls, allowed to grow to a very inconvenient length.

In after times the Anglo-Saxons and Danes also considered fine hair as one of the greatest beauties and ornaments of their persons, and were at no small pains in dressing it to advantage. Young ladies before marriage wore their hair uncovered and untied, flowing in ringlets over their shoulders; but as soon as they were married [7:11:108]they cut it shorter, tied it up, and put on a head-dress of some kind or other, according to the prevailing fashion. To have the hair entirely cut off was so great a disgrace, that it formed one of the most severe punishments inflicted on those women who had been guilty of adultery. The Danish soldiers who were quartered upon the English, in the reigns of Edgar the Peaceable and of Ethelred the Unready, were the beaux of those times, and were particularly attentive to the dressing of the hair, which they combed at least once every day, and thereby captivated the affections of the English ladies. The clergy, both secular and regular, were obliged to shave the crowns of their heads, and keep their hair short, which distinguished them from the laity; and several canons were made against their concealing their tonsure, or allowing their hair to grow long. The shape of this clerical tonsure was the subject of long and violent debates between the English clergy on the one hand, and those of the Scots and Picts on the other; amongst the former it was circular, amongst the latter only semicircular. It appears, indeed, that long flowing hair was universally esteemed a great ornament; and the tonsure of the clergy was considered as an act of mortification and self-denial, which many of them submitted to with reluctance, and endeavoured as much as possible to conceal. Some of them who affected the reputation of superior sanctity inveighed with great bitterness against the long hair of the laity; and laboured earnestly to persuade them to cut it short, in imitation of the clergy. Thus the famous St Wulstan, bishop of Worcester, is said to have declaimed with great vehemence against luxury of all kinds, but chiefly against long hair as the most criminal and most universal. “The English,” says William of Malmsbury in his life of St Wulstan, “were very vicious in their manners, and plunged in luxury, through the long peace which they had enjoyed in the reign of Edward the Confessor. The holy prelate Wulstan reproved the wicked of all ranks with great boldness; but he rebuked those with the greatest severity who were proud of their long hair. When any of those vain people bowed their heads before him to receive his blessing, before he gave it, be cut a lock of their hair with a little sharp knife, which he carried about him for that purpose; and commanded them, by way of penance for their sins, to cut all the rest of their hair in the same manner. If any of them refused to comply with this command, he denounced the most dreadful judgments upon them, reproached them for their effeminacy, and foretold, that as they imitated women in the length of their hair, they would imitate them in their cowardice when their country was invaded, which was accomplished at the landing of the Normans.”

This continued long to be a topic of declamation amongst the clergy, who even represented it as one of the greatest crimes, and most certain marks of reprobation. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce the sentence of excommunication against all who wore long hair; and for this pious zeal he was very much commended. Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired great honour by a sermon which he preached before Henry I. in the year 1104, against long and curled hair, with which the king and all his courtiers were so much affected that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets, of which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time to change their minds, but immediately pulled a pair of shears out of his sleeve, and performed the operation with his own hand. Another incident happened about twenty-five years thereafter, which gave a temporary check to the prevailing fondness for long hair. It is thus related by a contemporary historian: ‘ f An event happened in the year 1129, which seemed very wonderful to our young gallants; who, forgetting that they were men, had transformed themselves into women by the length of their hair. A certain knight, who was very proud of his long luxuriant hair, dreamed that a person suffocated him with its curls. As soon as he awoke from his sleep, he cut his hair to a decent length. The report of this spread over all England, and almost all the knights reduced their hair to the proper standard. But this reformation was not of long continuance; for in less than a year all who wished to appear fashionable returned to their former wickedness, and contended with the ladies in length of hair. Those to whom nature had denied that ornament supplied the defect by art.”

Hair, or Down, of plants, a general term expressive o all the hairy and glandular appearances on the surface o: plants, to which these arc supposed by naturalists to serve the double purpose of defensive weapons and vessels of sécrétion.

These hairs are minute threads of greater or less length and solidity; some of them being visible to the naked eye whilst others are rendered so only by the help of glasses Examined by a microscope, almost all the parts of plants particularly the young stalks or stems, appear covered with haiis.

Hairs on the surface of plants present themselves under various forms; in the leguminous plants, they are generally cylindric; in the mallow tribe, they terminate in a point in agrimony, they are shaped like a fish-hook; in nettle they are awl-shaped and jointed; and in some compounc flowers with hollow or funnel-shaped florets, they terminate in two crooked points.

Probable as some experiments have rendered it, that the hairs on the surface of plants contribute to some organica secretion, their principal use seems to be to preserve the parts in which they are lodged from the effect of violenl friction, from winds, from extremes of heat and cold, and such like external injuries.

Μ. Guettard, who, from the form, situation, and other circumstances of the hairy and glandular appearances or the surface of plants, established a botanical method, has demonstrated, that these appearances are generally constant and uniform in all the plants of the same genus. The same uniformity seems likewise to characterise all the different genera of the same natural order.

The different sorts of hairs which form the down upor the surface of plants were imperfectly distinguished by Grew in 1682, and by Malpighi in 1686. Μ. Guettard was the first who examined the subject both as a botanist and a philosopher. His observations were published in 1747.