Mr. Eisenberg. Do you usually take photographs?
Mr. Stombaugh. No, sir.
Mr. Eisenberg. And you took them—can you explain why you took them here?
Mr. Stombaugh. I took these at your request as an exhibit just to show what the hairs looked like. In a photograph it is very hard to try to point out the characteristics of hairs because they aren't clear. Under a microscope you can see each of these points by focusing up and down. If I am looking at the pigment on the hair, I can focus the comparison microscope up and down and see exactly the same characteristics, the pigment is exactly the same size, dispersed about the same, and there is approximately the same amount of pigment in a given area.
Also, the cuticle is of the same thickness. I can line the hairs up longitudinally and see that the tips of the scales match equally as far as protrusion and distance goes.
This you couldn't show in the photographs. In order to show each and every characteristic in photographs, I would have to take 500 or 600 different photographs.
Mr. Eisenberg. So these photographs are just as a general illustration of the kind of thing you see, rather than being given to the Commission as photographs from which the Commission is to make an identification?
Mr. Stombaugh. That is correct. If I were to look at these photographs myself, I couldn't make an identification on them because I wouldn't be able to see enough and I would say this looks like this and this looks like this, but so what?
What about the size of the pigments, what about the size of the scales, what about the thickness of the cuticle? I see a medulla here, I don't see a medulla over here. So you just couldn't see all the characteristics in a photograph.
Mr. Eisenberg. But these characteristics you do see as you change the focus on the microscope?