UNEASY SHAVES.

Shannon News, 17 October 1924, Page 4

UNEASY SHAVES.

ANCIENT AND MODERN RAZORS. If civilised man had to rely upo"a the primitive "razors" _of to retain the fashionable cleanshaven appearance, beards would inevitably become popular again. Before the bronze or, iron ages a wide variety of materials had to serve, including shells bones, and . flints—materials upon which a sufficiently sharp edge could; be ground. Sufficiently sharp, that is, to remove the hair, but by no means sharp enough to ensure an easy shave, writes Victor Raymond in the "Weekly Telegraph.", To call the bronze age "weapon" a razor is to i'asult our present extremely efficient article. There were a number of types, all cumbersome affairs, and difficult to manipulate, although undoubtedly an improvement upon the bone or flint variety. One primitive pattern had a very wide, moon-shaped body, with a ridiculously small handle, shaped like that of the modern spade, protruding from one side.

Another type, one used by the ancient Greeks, was shaped like the business end of a spade. Seeing that its handle—also of the short variety—projected from the top, it was apparently not meant to cut the beard, so much as to shovel it off. Is it surprising that our word razor was derived from the Latin radere, meaning to scrape? Yet another specimen was shaped like the head of a battle-axe, the handle consisting of a bird's head, and a swan-like neck. Excruciatingly painful methods of shaving still obtain in some parts of the world. For instance; the aborigines of Australia shave with pieces of glass or shell. Even more terrifying are the methods employed by some of the South Sea Islanders.. In some of the islands 1 a "treacley" substance is pasted over the face, and then allowed to dry,. after which it is jerked of piece by piece, bringing the hairs with it. One marvels that the natives do not all affect beards. Elsewhere in the South Seas a ffew hairs are selected at a time, to which is securely knotted a length of a fibrous material. The hairs are then pulled out literally by the roots, this operation being continually; repeated until at last the "shave" is.completed.