art of the body, is
made up of tiny animal cells. In the outer coat they become quite flat
like little scales and then wear off; and their places are taken by
the newer cells that are growing from beneath. The skin grows from
beneath, and bit by bit it sheds its old outer coat. This is how it
keeps itself nice and new on the outside and "grows away" the marks of
cuts and burns.

Now hold up your hand and look across it toward the light. What do you
see? It looks fuzzy, doesn't it? Ever and ever so many tiny little
hairs are on it. The other day a little boy asked me what made his
skin look so rough? I looked, and saw that all the little hairs were
standing on end, so that his skin looked like "goose-flesh." It was
because he was cold. The muscles at the roots of the hairs had
shortened, so that they pulled the hairs straight up and made the skin
look rough.

What part of the body has a great deal of hair on it? The head, of
course. Isn't it strange that you have such long hair on the top of
your head and none at all on the soles of your feet or the palms of
your hands? The hair on your head protects you from cold and rain and
the hot sun; but hair on your palms, would only be in the way.

Now look at the ends of your fingers. There the skin has grown so hard
that it forms _nails_. If you look at your toes, you will see that the
same thing has happened there. These nails are little pink shells to
protect the ends of your fingers and toes. You see what a wonderful
coat it is that you are wearing.

Does the skin coat keep you warm? Yes, and not only that, but it keeps
you cool, too. You have often seen little drops of water on your skin,
when you were very hot. This sweat, or perspiration, as we call it,
cools the body by making the skin moist. You know how cold it makes
you to be wrapped in a wet sheet. Well, the skin cools you in just the
same way, when it becomes wet with sweat. The sweat comes from the
blood under the skin; so that, as we saw before, by letting this
moisture pass through, the skin acts as a sieve to let out the waste
from the blood.

Then, too, the skin covers and protects all the other parts. It is
thin where it needs to be thin, so as not to interfere with quick
movements, as on the eyelids and the lips; and thick where it needs to
be thick, to stand wear and tear, as on the soles of the feet and the
palms of the hands. I remember once taking a sliver of shingle out of
the back of a little boy