The eye-lids serve to guard the ball of the eye, and to furnish it with a proper moisture. The upper lid rises and falls; the lower has scarce any motion; and though their being moved depends on the will, yet the will is unable to keep them open when sleep, or fatigue, oppresses the mind. In birds and amphibious quadrupeds the lower lid alone has motion; and fishes and insects have no eye-lids whatsoever.
The forehead makes a large part of the face, and chiefly contributes to its beauty. It ought to be justly proportioned, neither too round nor too flat, neither too narrow nor too low, and it should be regularly surrounded with the hair. The hair tends greatly to improve the face, and baldness takes away from beauty. Borrowed locks, however, do not justly supply the place of real ones, as the true character cannot be so well traced in the countenance when the one is substituted for the other. The highest part of the head, and that immediately above the temples, first becomes bald; the hair under the temples, and at the back of the head, is seldom known to fail.
It has been observed by some authors that baldness was peculiar to man, and that it never happens to women in the most advanced periods of life. The hair is, in general, thickest where the constitution is strongest, and more glossy and beautiful where the health is most permanent. The ancients supposed the hair to be produced like the nails, the part next the root pushing out that immediately contiguous. But the moderns have found that every hair may be truly said to live and to receive nutriment like other parts of the body. The roots do not turn grey sooner than the extremities, but the whole hair changes colour nearly at the same time, and we have many instances of persons who have grown grey in one night's time. When turned white it gradually loses its strength and falls off. Aristotle asserts, that no man ever became bald previous to his intercourse with women.
The nose is the most prominent feature in the face, but as it has scarce any motion, even in the strongest passions, it rather adds to the beauty, than to the expression of the countenance. The form of this feature, and its advanced position, are peculiar to the human visage alone. Other animals, for the most part, have nostrils with a partition between them, but none of them have an elevated nose. Apes themselves have scarce any thing else of this feature but the nostrils, the rest of the feature lying flat upon the visage, and scarce higher than the cheek-bones. This organ serves man and most animals not only to breathe but to enjoy odoriferous scents. Birds have merely two holes for these purposes.