Ho Ah Kow brought the subject of his being violently deprived of his queue before the courts, alleging that the loss of that taillike appendage was a mark of disgrace and ostracised him from associating with his fellow Celestials here below, and what was worse—that after death it would bring un merited misfortune and punishment upon him in the world to come. Ho had been sent to jail in San Francisco for keeping a board ing-house not of the regulation size; while in confinement his hair had been cut or dipt to the uniform length of one inch from the scalp. Although this hair-dressing had been done in pursuance of an ordinance of the city, the Court held the act illegal, the law unconstitutional and gave a judgment in favor of the tailless Chinaman. (20 Albany Latv Journal, 250.) In the old days, when every particular in jury to the human form divine had to be paid for by a compensation settled by statute, hair was not forgotten in the list of prices. In the realm covered by the laws of Howel, the Good, we find, in the Venedotian Code, that the worth of hair plucked from the roots was "a penny for every finger used in plucking it out and two pence for the thumb." The Dimetian Code, however, went higher; "a legal penny for every hair pulled by the root from the head and twenty-four pence for the front hair. The Gwentian Code valued a person's eyelid at a penny for every hair upon it. Even a horse's hair was not deemed too insignificant a thing to be dealt with by the old Welsh law makers (De minimis non curât lex, appears not to have been among their legal maxims); they enacted that who soever should borrow a horse and chafe its hack so as to cause an ugly loss of its hair should pay four legal pennies to its owner. The mane of a horse was worth as much as its bridle, that is, four pence. Whosoever cut off the tail of a horse had to put the in jured animal in a place where it could not
be seen, and keep it there until the caudal appendage had grown as before, supplying the owner with another nag meanwhile. These old worthies seem to have been as considerate of the horse's sensitiveness over the loss of its hirsute adornment as was David over that of his messengers to Hanun the Ammonite. One cannot speak of horse hair without thinking of the wigs of English barristers; these coverings were introduced into Eng land from France after the Restoration; they came in very gradually, the judges thinking them, at first, so very coxcombical that they would not suffer their wearers to plead be fore them. Tempora mutantur—now this grotesque ornament, fit only for an African chief, is considered almost indispensably necessary to the proper administration of justice in England in this Twentieth Century of Grace. We are told that tigers' whiskers, chopped fine and mixed with ordinary food, was, at one time, a recognized and most dreadful in strument for the punishment of criminals in Burmah. A decade or two ago there was some extensive and expensive litigation over who should have the custody of a certain holy relic, called "Assura Shereef," which was a small case containing a hair from the beard of Prophet Mahomet. The case was heard before the High Court of Madras, and was keenly contested; perchance the fact that the rightful guardian of the sacred heir loom was entitled to a government pension of Rs loo added zest to the contest. Some six claimants, some men, others women, were represented by gentlemen of the long robe. As some of the counsel were Mr. Biligiri Izengar, Mr. Sabramaniein Sastri and Mr. Nullathamby Moodelliar, all who know anything about that learned and ac complished bar can imagine how astute must have been the arguments, how eloquent the appeals, how keen the discussions.
