live." M.H.C.

* * * * *

The "Additional Hair" Supply.

The late war between France and China had one effect which the public
did not expect,--it created a panic among the French dealers in human
hair. Before that war began it was not generally known that a vast
proportion of the false hair used in Europe and America was imported
from China into France and there prepared for the trade. But the
beginning of hostilities between the two countries made the fact
apparent by the sudden cutting off of the customary supply from the
Celestial Empire. A German paper mentions that in 1883 the hair thus
imported amounted to one hundred and twenty-four thousand seven hundred
and fifteen kilograms, for which the French dealers paid at the rate of
only ten or twelve francs per kilogram. As no other country can, or at
any rate will, supply human hair in such enormous quantities and at such
a low price, the effect on the market may easily be imagined. The
hair-merchants of Marseilles had been accustomed to furnish at least
twenty-five thousand _coiffures_ for women and several thousand wigs for
men every year; and even before the stoppage of direct communication
with China they had found it hard to get as much raw material as they
needed. When their principal drawing-point became inaccessible they were
reduced to despair, and perhaps presented the only case ever known in
which "tearing the hair" would seem to have been attended with some
practical benefit. However, the termination of the war revived their
hopes, and they are now making up for the lost time with a vigor and
determination which even threaten the male Celestial with the loss of
his sacred pig-tail.

The European sources from which human hair is obtained are not numerous
or very prolific. Many peasant-women of Normandy and Bretagne sell their
beautiful brown, red, or golden locks, but these are of such fine
quality that they command very high prices. Norman or Breton girls
having braids eighty centimetres in length sell them for as much as a
thousand francs. Perfectly white hair from the same French provinces
brings a sum which seems almost fabulous. The French journal "Science
et Nature" declares that the price commonly paid for a braid of such
white hair weighing one kilogram is _twenty-five thousand francs_.

The hair-merchants of France have never been very successful in drawing
supplies for their business from England, Germany