Abstract
THE hair of the Negro, Bantu and related races takes the form of short, curly tufts, with an entanglement of interlacing whorled and looped fibres and loose broken fragments, an absence of any orderly arrangement giving the hair its characteristic frizziness. The fibres are very variable in thickness (40-80μ) and usually show breakage phases towards the free end, frequent fragmentations serving to keep the hair short. In cross section they are highly elliptical (1:1.4), finer and thicker intervals, just visible to the naked eye, corresponding with the minor and major axes displayed where the fibre is twisted. Samples taken from the West African Negro, and South African Hottentot, Swazi and Xosa* show no significant differences. On close study, certain structural peculiarities are revealed which serve to interpret the characters mentioned and have a bearing upon the forms assumed by mammalian hair generally.
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References
NATURE, 131, Feb. 11, 1933.
J. Text. Inst., 22, July 1931.
Trans. Farad. Soc., 29, january 1933.
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DUERDEN, J. Spirals and Twists of Negro Hair. Nature 132, 106–107 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132106a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132106a0