374 'THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the nonrequirement of independent movement, grown together 

 to form the single lip which we now possess ; but the line of junc- 

 tion is not perfect, and so the furrow results ; and sometimes there 

 is a distinct scar down the middle of the furrow. The possession 

 of this furrowed upper lip by children is one of the strongest 

 pieces of evidence against the descent of man from any catarrhine, 

 and in favor of his descent from platyrrhines, or from lemurs 

 through the intervention of platyrrhinelike ancestors, of which 

 there are no exact living representatives. 



Another feature of a child's face is capable of similar explana- 

 tion as a vestigial relic of its ancestors' other modes of life. The 

 pouchlike cheeks of a baby are particularly noticeable, and they 

 may be especially remarked in the representation of cherubs 

 adorning ecclesiastical monuments. In such connection it savors 

 of sacrilege to suggest that these inflated baby-cheeks, so much 

 admired by all mothers, and regarded by churchmen as particular 

 features of a hypothetical higher sort of beings angels are 

 really the attributes of a lower order, and are the vestiges of 

 cheek-pouches, possessed for storing away food, as in Cercopiihe- 

 cus, a monkey in which this habit of storing may be observed at 

 the Zoological Gardens, if visitors feed it. 



There is no need to enter into embryological or anatomical 

 details concerning the characters for which children are indebted 

 to monkeys. They possess in common with their adults a rudi- 

 mentary tail hidden beneath the skin ; but this is not a fact that 

 every one can verify on the instant. Yet those who have the care 

 of children can easly see for themselves the scar which the loss of 

 the tail has still left on children's bodies a scar which is curi- 

 ously similar to what would obtain after amputation of a tail. 

 Just at the base of the vertebral column exactly where the tail 

 would protrude through the flesh if it were functionally active 

 is a deep circular depression, sufiicient almost for the insertion 

 of the little finger. In young babies it is very noticeable ; and 

 nurses, while wondering what purpose it serves, abuse it as a 

 place which is difiicult to wash. In older children it gradually 

 becomes shallower ; and in those about five or seven years old it 

 may or may not be shown. That it marks the place where a tail 

 formerly protruded in our ancestors there can be no doubt from 

 its shape and its position. I was curious to see if the anthropoid 

 apes, which share with man this loss or rather atrophy of the tail, 

 also exhibited this tail-mark ; and I was interested to notice, in 

 an adult female gorilla in the British Museum, that the tail- 

 mark was as large as a florin. Its persistence to the adult stage 

 in the case of the gorilla and its earlier loss in man is prob- 

 ably accounted for b} the latter having attained a more perfect 

 upright carriage of the body, and therefore a consequent in- 



