Several other ways of turning hair are adopted, but the principle is the same. Some use the “card” with the “nitting machine” attached. The teeth of the machine are allowed to be open or close, depending upon the coarse or fine quality of the hair, proceeding upon the principle that these “knobs,” or roots, will offer a slight resistance and be intercepted in their course. Others, again, employ a row of needles, closely set together, with the same object in view, and producing a like result.
I observe that in a recent American work on the Hair, by C. Henri Leonard, M.D., the subject of hair “turning” has not escaped his notice. He says, speaking of the epidermal coat or cellular layer, that “the flat, quadrilateraloid cells forming it overlap each other, just as the tiles or shingles do each other on our houses,” and that “this peculiarity of arrangement of the scales can be detected by the touch; thus, drawing the hair briskly through the fingers, from the tip to the root, it will then seem to be rough and uneven. Often, when quite firm pressure is used, a humming sound may be produced by this manœuvre. You can by this means always tell which is the root-end and which the tip end of the hair, as the overlapping layers lie _from_ the roots. Now if you turn the hair, end for end, and draw it from the root to the tip, it will be felt to be smooth and even. Advantage has been taken of this fact by hair dealers and dressers, in arranging their stock. Where the hair has become disarranged, that is, a part with the roots one way and the remainder with the tips in the same direction, the whole is thrown upon a smooth, hard surface, and rolled briskly back and forth with the palm of the hand, or pulp of the fingers, when those with the roots in the same direction will begin to ‘back out’ from the mass, and then can be easily sorted out and arranged in a proper manner. Were this precaution not taken (to have the points all one way) the hair would never lie evenly and smoothly upon the head. This same ‘rolling’ process, in a minor degree, takes place at each twist of the head on the pillow, and hence explains why our ladies’ hairs are less snarled and tangled than they would otherwise be after a night’s repose.”