as for hair, men differ in this themselves at different ages, and also from all other kinds of animals that have hair. these are almost all which are internally viviparous, for even when the covering of such animals is spiny it must be considered as a kind of hair, as in the land hedgehog and any other such animal among the vivipara. hairs differ in respect of hardness and softness, length and shortness, straightness and curliness, quantity and scantiness, and in addition to these qualities, in their colours, whiteness and blackness and the intermediate shades. they differ also in some of these respects according to age, as they are young or growing old. this is especially plain in man; the hair gets coarser as time goes on, and some go bald on the front of the head; children indeed do not go bald, nor do women, but men do so by the time their age is advancing. human beings also go grey on the head as they grow old, but this is not visible in practically any other animal, though more so in the horse than others. men go bald on the front of the head, but turn grey first on the temples; no one goes bald first on these or on the back of the head. some such affections occur in a corresponding manner also in all animals which have not hair but something analogous to it, as the feathers of birds and scales in the class of fish.
for what purpose nature has made hair in general for animals has been previously stated in the work dealing with the causes of the parts of animals; it is the business of the present inquiry to show under what circumstances and for what necessary causes each particular kind of hair occurs. the principal cause then of thickness and thinness is the skin, for this is thick in some animals and thin in others, rare in some and dense in others. the different quality of the included moisture is also a helping cause, for in some animals this is greasy and in others watery. for generally speaking the substratum of the skin is of an earthy nature; being on the surface of the body it becomes solid and earthy as the moisture evaporates. now the hairs or their analogue are not formed out of the flesh but out of the skin moisture evaporating and exhaling in them, and therefore thick hairs arise from a thick skin and thin from thin. if then the skin is rarer and thicker, the hairs are thick because of the quantity of earthy matter and the size of the pores, but if it is denser they are thin because of the narrowness of the pores. further, if the moisture be watery it dries up quickly and the hairs do not gain in size, but if it be greasy the opposite happens, for the greasy is not easily dried up. therefore the thicker-skinned animals are as a general rule thicker-haired for the causes mentioned; however, the thickest-skinned are not more so than other thick-skinned ones, as is shown by the class of swine compared to that of oxen and to the elephant and many others. and for the same reason also the hairs of the head in man are thickest, for this part of his skin is thickest and lies over most moisture and besides is very porous.
the cause of the hairs being long or short depends on the evaporating moisture not being easily dried. of this there are two causes, quantity and quality; if the liquid is much it does not dry up easily nor if it is greasy. and for this reason the hairs of the head are longest in man, for the brain, being fluid and cold, supplies great abundance of moisture.
the hairs become straight or curly on account of the vapour arising in them. if it be smoke-like, it is hot and dry and so makes the hair curly, for it is twisted as being carried with a double motion, the earthy part tending downwards and the hot upwards. thus, being easily bent, it is twisted owing to its weakness, and this is what is meant by curliness in hair. it is possible then that this is the cause, but it is also possible that, owing to its having but little moisture and much earthy matter in it, it is dried by the surrounding air and so coiled up together. for what is straight becomes bent, if the moisture in it is evaporated, and runs together as a hair does when burning upon the fire; curliness will then be a contraction owing to deficiency of moisture caused by the heat of the environment. a sign of this is the fact that curly hair is harder than straight, for the dry is hard. and animals with much moisture are straight-haired; for in these hairs the moisture advances as a stream, not in drops. for this reason the scythians on the black sea and the thracians are straight-haired, for both they themselves and the environing air are moist, whereas the aethiopians and men in hot countries are curly-haired, for their brains and the surrounding air are dry.
some, however, of the thick-skinned animals are fine-haired for the cause previously stated, for the finer the pores are the finer must the hairs be. hence the class of sheep have such hairs (for wool is only a multitude of hairs).
there are some animals whose hair is soft and yet less fine, as is the case with the class of hares compared with that of sheep; in such animals the hair is on the surface of the skin, not deeply rooted in it, and so is not long but in much the same state as the scrapings from linen, for these also are not long but are soft and do not admit of weaving.
the condition of sheep in cold climates is opposite to that of man; the hair of the scythians is soft but that of the sauromatic sheep is hard. the reason of this is the same as it is also all wild animals. the cold hardens and solidifies them by drying them, for as the heat is pressed out the moisture evaporates, and both hair and skin become earthy and hard. in wild animals then the exposure to the cold is the cause of hardness in the hair, in the others the nature of the climate is the cause. a proof of this is also what happens in the sea-urchins which are used as a remedy in stranguries. for these, too, though small themselves, have large and hard spines because the sea in which they live is cold on account of its depth (for they are found in sixty fathoms and even more). the spines are large because the growth of the body is diverted to them, since having little heat in them they do not concoct their nutriment and so have much residual matter and it is from this that spines, hairs, and such things are formed; they are hard and petrified through the congealing effect of the cold. in the same way also plants are found to be harder, more earthy, and stony, if the region in which they grow looks to the north than if it looks to the south, and those in windy places than those in sheltered, for they are all more chilled and their moisture evaporates.
hardening, then, comes of both heat and cold, for both cause the moisture to evaporate, heat per se and cold per accidens (since the moisture goes out of things along with the heat, there being no moisture without heat), but whereas cold not only hardens but also condenses, heat makes a substance rarer.
for the same reason, as animals grow older, the hairs become harder in those which have hairs, and the feathers and scales in the feathered and scaly kinds. for their skins become harder and thicker as they get older, for they are dried up, and old age, as the word denotes, is earthy because the heat fails and the moisture along with it.
men go bald visibly more than any other animal, but still such a state is something general, for among plants also some are evergreens while others are deciduous, and birds which hibernate shed their feathers. similar to this is the condition of baldness in those human beings to whom it is incident. for leaves are shed by all plants, from one part of the plant at a time, and so are feathers and hairs by those animals that have them; it is when they are all shed together that the condition is described by the terms mentioned, for it is called ‘going bald’ and ‘the fall of the leaf’ and ‘moulting’. the cause of the condition is deficiency of hot moisture, such moisture being especially the unctuous, and hence unctuous plants are more evergreen. (however we must elsewhere state the cause of this phenomena in plants, for other causes also contribute to it.) it is in winter that this happens to plants (for the change from summer to winter is more important to them than the time of life), and to those animals which hibernate (for these, too, are by nature less hot and moist than man); in the latter it is the seasons of life that correspond to summer and winter. hence no one goes bald before the time of sexual intercourse, and at that time it is in those naturally inclined to such intercourse that baldness appears, for the brain is naturally the coldest part of the body and sexual intercourse makes men cold, being a loss of pure natural heat. thus we should expect the brain to feel the effect of it first, for a little cause turns the scale where the thing concerned is weak and in poor condition. thus if we reckon up these points, that the brain itself has but little heat, and further that the skin round it must needs have still less, and again that the hair must have still less than the skin inasmuch as it is furthest removed from the brain, we should reasonably expect baldness to come about this age upon those who have much semen. and it is for the same reason that the front part of the head alone goes bald in man and that he is the only animal to do so; the front part goes bald because the brain is there, and man is the only animal to go bald because his brain is much the largest and the moistest. women do not go bald because their nature is like that of children, both alike being incapable of producing seminal secretion. eunuchs do not become bald, because they change into the female condition. and as to the hair that comes later in life, eunuchs either do not grow it at all, or lose it if they happen to have it, with the exception of the pubic hair; for women also grow that though they have not the other, and this mutilation is a change from the male to the female condition.
the reason why the hair does not grow again in cases of baldness, although both hibernating animals recover their feathers or hair and trees that have shed their leaves grow leaves again, is this. the seasons of the year are the turning-points of their lives, rather than their age, so that when these seasons change they change with them by growing and losing feathers, hairs, or leaves respectively. but the winter and summer, spring and autumn of man are defined by his age, so that, since his ages do not return, neither do the conditions caused by them return, although the cause of the change of condition is similar in man to what it is in the animals and plants in question.
we have now spoken pretty much of all the other conditions of hair.
