Aristotle THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

128 pages - You are on Page 84

Part 11

Hair is naturally fissile, and in this respect it differs in degree in diverse animals. In some animals the hair goes on gradually hardening into bristle until it no longer resembles hair but spine, as in the case of the hedgehog. And in like manner with the nails; for in some animals the nail differs as regards solidity in no way from bone.

Of all animals man has the most delicate skin: that is, if we take into consideration his relative size. In the skin or hide of all animals there is a mucous liquid, scanty in some animals and plentiful in others, as, for instance, in the hide of the ox; for men manufacture glue out of it. (And, by the way, in some cases glue is manufactured from fishes also.) The skin, when cut, is in itself devoid of sensation; and this is especially the case with the skin on the head, owing to there being no flesh between it and the skull. And wherever the skin is quite by itself, if it be cut asunder, it does not grow together again, as is seen in the thin part of the jaw, in the prepuce, and the eyelid. In all animals the skin is one of the parts that extends continuous and unbroken, and it comes to a stop only where the natural ducts pour out their contents, and at the mouth and nails.

All sanguineous animals, then, have skin; but not all such animals have hair, save only under the circumstances described above. The hair changes its colour as animals grow old, and in man it turns white or grey. With animals, in general, the change takes place, but not very obviously, or not so obviously as in the case of the horse. Hair turns grey from the point backwards to the roots. But, in the majority of cases, grey hairs are white from the beginning; and this is a proof that greyness of hair does not, as some believe to be the case, imply withering or decrepitude, for no part is brought into existence in a withered or decrepit condition.

In the eruptive malady called the white-sickness all the hairs get grey; and instances have been known where the hair became grey while the patients were ill of the malady, whereas the grey hairs shed off and black ones replaced them on their recovery. (Hair is more apt to turn grey when it is kept covered than when exposed to the action of the outer air.) In men, the hair over the temples is the first to turn grey, and the hair in the front grows grey sooner than the hair at the back; and the hair on the pubes is the last to change colour.

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