HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



99 



in the scrub, almost in the twinkling of an eye, was a 

 caution. It seemed impossible that a pair of limbs 

 could be specialised to such rapid and powerful 

 motion. Presently other species of marsupial 

 animals were noted. An opossum was caught in 

 the very act of climbing a tree ; three or four 

 specimens of bandicots (one with a young one in 

 her singular pouch) were captured by the dogs, and 

 my diligent outlook for the kangaroo-bear was re- 

 warded by discovering one in the fork of a half-dead 

 gum-tree. His light-grey furry coat was exactly of 

 the same shade as the bark of the tree, so that he is 

 admirably protected thereby. He looked down from 

 his point of vantage with such a serio-comic expres- 

 sion that I could not forbear laughing ; but he never 

 moved a muscle. 



It was full moonlight during these nights in the 

 forest, and I enjoyed the weirdness of the situation 

 as a new experience. Many a time during the 

 evening I went out in the open air, so as to more 

 thoroughly allow the surroundings to impress me. 

 There was a cloudless sky, and the black-and-white 

 dead trees, some spreading out their naked branches 

 like spectres, others lying in every direction upon the 

 ground, just as they had fallen, added to the ghostly 

 situation. A loud chorus of frogs filled the air with 

 increasing noise, and the laughing jackasses were 

 more numerous and more noisy than I have known 

 them anywhere else. Every tree seemed to have its 

 pair of them. There appeared to be a competitive 

 examination in laughing going on, a sort of avian 

 handicap. These laughing duets appear to have 

 been written from the same score. There is the 

 soprano and the baritone — the latter an unmusical 

 cackle, the former occasionally rising to a theatrical 

 and very stagey laughter. All through the night 

 these birds kept up the sport ; nor did they seem to 

 be tired of it all the next day. The crow-shrikes or 

 magpies were also affected by the brilliant moonlight ; 

 and every now and then one could hear their flute- 

 like cadences amid the dramatic laughter of the 

 jackasses. In addition, there was a distant chorus 

 of undiscoverable sounds, and an occasional shriek 

 or groan that might be anything, but which was 

 all the more mysterious because it could not be 

 identified. 



One may slowly ride horseback (as we did for three 

 days) for weeks in these forest lands — through almost 

 impassable thickets of scrub or bush, through 

 swamps and bogs, and past solemn, quiet lakes 

 where myriads of black swans and mountain ducks 

 are feeding. The fauna and the flora repeat them- 

 selves with never-palling delight to the "new chum " 

 who is a naturalist. In a few years these scenes will 

 be no more — the trees will be cut down, the bush 

 cleared, and thousands of happy English homes will 

 replace swamp and bog. For the hands of honest 

 emigrants there is abundance of work in making the 

 wilderness and the solitary places to become glad. 



PATHOLOGY AND ITS RELATION TO 

 EVOLUTION. 



[Continued from p. 82.] 



TAILED men have been laughed off many time?, 

 because, in the majority of cases, they have been 

 found to be nothing else than some structural disease, 

 as a fatty tumour, spina bifida, or a coccygeal tumour. 

 But Gerlach (" Ein Fall von Schwanzbildung bei 

 einem menschlichen Embryo," Morph. Jahr. Bd. vi. 

 S. 1S6, 1880) has described a case in which there were 

 muscle tissue and notochord. And I may add that 

 there is evidence that a longer caudal region at one 

 time existed, for in the embryo the notochord ex- 

 tends beyond the region that corresponds with the 

 tip of the coccyx. 



Morphologically considered, the odontoid process 

 corresponds to a portion of the centrum of the atlas. 

 This has three centres of ossification— two at the base 

 and one at the apex; the centra of the vertebrae, 

 excepting this one, have but one nucleus. Johannes 

 Miiller detected two nuclei in the sacral vertebrae of 

 birds. And Professor Cope has recorded in the 

 * Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,' 

 vol. xix. p. 51, 1880-82, a case of a Ganocephalean, 

 Eiyops megalocephala, found in the Permian forma- 

 tion of Texas, where a large intercentrum was inter- 

 posed between each vertebra, and each centrum 

 consisted of two lateral pieces or pleurocentra. There 

 is, from these evidences, every reason to believe that 

 in the ossification of the os odontoideum we retain a 

 primitive character, "whilst in the occasional exist- 

 ence of a half-vertebra, either in excess or diminution, 

 or accompanied by disturbance in the normal ossifi- 

 cation of the column, we have to deal with atavistic 

 phenomena." 



Mr. Sutton thus sums up— 



"I. During development the human embryo 

 possesses more mesoblastic somites than are utilised 

 in the formation of the permanent vertebral column. 



"2. At least one undergoes suppression in the 

 cervical and lumbar regions respectively, and 

 probably many in the caudal region of the column. 



"3. Occasionally one, or half of one somite usually 

 suppressed, may persist and give rise to a super- 

 numerary vertebra, or ^-vertebra ; or the suppression 

 may extend beyond its usual limits, and the total 

 number of segments in the column be fewer than 

 usual. 



" 4. Under exceptional circumstances, a vertebral 

 centrum may arise from two distinct centres of ossi- 

 fication ; this must be regarded as indicating the 

 reappearance of an ancestral character. The study 

 of the spinal column teems with illustrations of 

 the two laws — namely, those of suppression and 

 coalescence." 



Mamma: erratica: or Supernumerary Mamma. — In 

 man and the higher Eutherians, and in the Sirenia 



F 2 



