RESEMBLANCES AMONG ANIMALS 3°9 



represent amazingly " a family of tiny birds with long necks and 

 swelling breasts and dropping tails, verily like an autumn brood of 

 bob-whites" (W. H. Gibson), Fig. 9. Had they been twenty times 

 their present size they might have run the risk of being described as 

 mimics ! 



Among other resemblances of this nature one recalls the spectacles 

 which appear on the neck of the cobra. Then there are the insect, 



Fig. 8. "Octopus" shown in hindmost abdominal Segments of ihe laeval Tipula. 



monkey and human figures in orchids and in various other plants, 

 pictured in flowers, parts of flowers and in fruit. The last sometimes 

 give striking and grotesque forms, as in the case of our common garden 

 snap-dragon, Antirrhinum. Here, Fig. 10, the seed pods look like 

 diminutive human heads which are arranged on the stalk in a way 

 which suggests the poles-of-skulls, or " medicine " ornaments of certain 

 savages. Peculiarly perfect is this resemblance, for there are pictured 

 not merely the cranium and face, but the dried and weathered 

 portions of scalp, eyelids, lips, as well also as temporal sutures. The 

 color of these seed pods, furthermore, is strikingly like that of mum- 

 mied heads. Meaningless resemblances occur also in various bones, as 

 in the case of the goat skull or the " ear-bone " noted above. Thus, 

 as Hugh Miller long ago discovered, there is a curious human figure in 

 the cranium of a Devonian fish, and the rabbit, even when " dead 

 and turned to dust " is not free from its arch-enemy, for its sphenoid 

 (Fig. 6) pictures the head of a fox so cunningly indeed that this bone 

 has long been used as a scarf ornament for the English hunter. 



Instances of this kind need hardly be multiplied. They extend on 

 every side in the inorganic as well as the organic — from the simple 

 cloud figures conjured by Aristophanes or the various forms of 

 weathered rocks (like the " camel of Brignogan "), to the most curious 

 and complicated. 



