94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



indeed molt invisibly, are continnonsly shedding our scales, but 

 there are some animals that get through this process even more 

 quickly than do birds, as, for instance, the shedding of the skin 

 as a whole by the newt, eft, and snake. 



Sir James Paget has noted that some people have a few 

 extra long hairs growing out from the general mass of the eye- 

 brows. These few long hairs are representatives of a perma- 

 nent condition in the chimpanzee and some baboons. Tliey grow 

 out separately from the general hairy mass over the superciliary 

 ridges. 



Darwin notes as a significant fact that the palms of the hands 

 and the soles of the feet of man are quite naked of hairs, like the 

 inferior surfaces of all four extremities in most of the lower ani- 

 mals. 



Something about the ear. The lobule of the ear is peculiar to 

 man : there is, however, a rudiment of it in the gorilla. Happy 

 gorilla and man ! 



About the brain of man and apes. The whole comparison is 

 one of degree, and in the case of the Bushman's brain with that 

 of a well-developed ape, the comparison becomes nearly equal. 

 Richard Owen once claimed that the hippocampus minor, a tri- 

 fling portion of the interior of the brain, was the only exclusively 

 characteristic human part, but it has since been demonstrated in 

 the orang and chimpanzee. In truth there are no specific distinc- 

 tions between the brain of the ape and that of man ! I possess in 

 pickle the brain of a monkey ; I am sure that my own brain is of 

 much greater proportional weight and complexity. It is a pleas- 

 ing reflection ! 



To turn to a totally different class of analogies, picking them 

 out and noting them from the thousands of examples in the world 

 of manners, thoughts, and ideas. The effects of civilization and 

 town life upon man and some of the lower creation is very well 

 exemplified by the town sparrow being seldom caught by a cat 

 or slain by a missile, while the bumpkin bird is easily overtaken 

 by the one or the other. Experientia docet at one time the gulls 

 of the Serpentine used to slay the sparrows; they knew not 

 their enemy, but with each new generation of their victims the 

 gulls had fewer meals, fosti'nit'h^ bee;u,-\:legcribed as the accu- 

 mulated experience of the race. 'We.hav-fe.-had a good example 

 of it here ; that it is common eilbtfgh ."^mong the different races 

 of mankind and the various animal^ ol: the creation goes with- 

 out saying, and Dr. Taylpr nearly, iprovfss that it exists among 

 plants. ' ' . \ . ' ' ' _; . 



Parents watching the characters of their children observe that 

 at one time the traits of the mother are to the fore, and that at 

 another period of the child's existence he or she shows the chips 



