FALSE HAIR AND HEADACHES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1586, 22 April 1887, Page 3

FALSE HAIR AND HEADACHES.

A member of the medical profession is credited with the statement, says the New l'ork Graphic, that the practice of physicians has been considerably diminished within the past few years by a certain change in feminine fashions. The change referred to is the matter of wearing false hair. Although it is still worn to a considerable extent, the custom of loading down the head with a heavy mass of false coils and braids is a thing of the past, and those who still resort to the habit indulge in this form of " beautification" to a very moderate extent, confining their capillary increment chiefly to frizzes and bangs of airy lightness that wave about their foreheads, and upon the slightest provocation shed themselves in generous profusion over the surface of the young man's new winter overcoat. In the age of heavy chignons the general prevalence of severe headaches, pains in the neck, weak eyes, scalp affections, and a dozen other feminine complaints were directly traceable to the custom referred to. Now they have for the most part disappeared, and authorities say that we are to have a healthier and more robust race of women in the future. It is remarked, however, that the loss of practice resulting from the change of fashion to the medical profession has been partly compensated by the increased use of cosmetics and the evils resulting therefrom. Thus as far as actual gain is concerned, it proves to be six of one and half a dozen of the other, and shows that the age of folly is by no means yet at an end.

SPANISH GALLEONS The need of greater passenger accommodation, due to the development of American colonisation, caused the Spanish shipbuilders to load the decks with towering forecastle and poop structures, each containing two or three tiers of cabins, instead of meeting the new demand by planning ships adapted to different conditions than had before obtained. Thus at each extremity of the vessel was a top-heavy fabric having a height equal to nearly one-fourth of her length, and rendering it dangerous to carry even the lower canvas in a fresh breeze, while the sides " tumbled home," as the sailors term it, that is to say, inclined inward toward each other as they rose, so that the greatest breadth was below the water line, the least on the upper deck. Round-bowed and square-sterned, steering badly and commonly overloaded with cargo, the rate of progression was, under the most favourable circumstances not more than twenty-five leagues a day. Therefore usually about fifteen days were required for the last and most perilous stage of the homeward voyage, that from the Azores, distant only 800 miles from the western coast of Portugal. The active life of a Spanish ship was short, even if she escaped the perils of weather and warfare, no vessel being considered fit for further ocean service after, at the most, four journies to and from America. This was partly due to no adequate method of sheathing been known by which the sides under water could be protected from the attacks of worms, and in part to radical defects in planning and construction. A galleon of four hundred tons burden, the average size, would be allowed a keel length of sixtyeight feet, little more than that given to an English vessel of only one hundred and fifty feet. The length of the upper deck being some ninety feet, with huge bow timbers in addition, the effect of the relatively immense superstructure was to cause the vessel to pitch and strain to an extent which frequently opened the seams, the keel being too short to ride on two or more waves at once, and so lessen the abruptness of her rise and fall); the rule was that the foremast should have the same length a% the keel, and the mainmast that of the upper deck, the mizzenmast and bowsprit being each 60 feet long. On each mast were two or three yards, and over the lower ones were large basketshaped " tops" 40 or 50 feet in circumference, which in action was filled with musketeers. The traveller in the East who meets with some of the Spanishbuilt steamers trading to the Phillippines may still see in the heavy bows, the massive tops, and the old-fashioned window-fitted ports a curious survival of the features of the ancient galleon.