teriorly in a faint line
up to the navel, with tendency to form a triangle with the apex
above, and posteriorly extends backwards to the anus. In women
these anterior and posterior extensions are comparatively rare,
or at all events are only represented by a few stray hairs. Rothe
found this variation in 4 per cent. of North German women, though
a triangle of hair was only found in 2 per cent.; Lombroso found
it in 5 per cent, of Italian women; Bergh found it in only 1.6
per cent. among 1000 Danish prostitutes, all sixteen of whom with
three exceptions were brunettes. In Vienna, among 600 women, Coe
found only 1 per cent, with this distribution of hair, and states
that they were women of decidedly masculine type, though Ploss
and Bartels, as well as Rothe, find, however, that heterogeny, as
they term the masculine distribution, is more common in blondes.
The anterior extension of hair is usually accompanied by the
posterior extension around the anus, usually very slight, but
occasionally as pronounce as in men. (According to Rothe,
however, anterior heterogeny comparatively rare.) These masculine
variations in the extension of the pubic hair appear to be not
uncommonly associated with other physical and psychic anomalies;
it is on this account that they have sometimes been regarded as
indications of a vicious or a criminal temperament; they are,
however, found in quite normal women.

The pubic hair of women is usually shorter than that of men, but
thick, and the individual hairs stronger and larger in diameter
than those of men, as Pfaff first showed; dark hair is usually
stronger than light. In both length and size the individual
variations are considerable. The usual length is about 2 inches,
or 3-5 centimeters, occasionally reaching about 4 inches, or 9-10
centimeters, in the larger curls. In a series of 100 women
attended during confinement in London and the north of England I
have only once (in a rather blonde Lancashire woman) found the
hair on labia reaching a conspicuous length of several inches and
forming an obstruction to the manipulations involved in delivery.
But Jahn delivered a woman whose pubic hair was longer than that
of her head, reaching below her knee; Paulini also knew a woman
whose pubic hair nearly reached her knees and was sold to make
wigs; Barthol