358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



surplus length of chorda persists without there being any verte- 

 hrse formed upon it. 



Real vertebral tails, in which the vertebra-containing part of 

 the embryonal tail remains without being grown over and the 

 coccyx preserves its original straighter direction, have been, if we 

 may trust the older anatomists and physicians, not very rarely 

 observed. Surgeon-General Ornstein, a few years ago, carefully 

 studied such a case in Athens in a Greek from Livadia, twenty-six 

 yeats of age. There was in this case a conical tail, free only at 

 the tip, about two inches long, within which three vertebrje might 

 be felt by pressing upon it. It did not, however, hang perpen- 

 dicularly down, but the coccyx was slightly, though less than in 

 normal cases, bent inward. Notwithstanding its apparent firm- 

 ness, this little movable tail was not distinguishable by the color 

 of its skin from its surroundings. It was hairless, although 

 the sacral region was very hirsute. The free part was not 

 half as long as the whole.* While only three shrunken verte- 

 bral fragments could be felt in this case, free tails of like char- 

 acter have been described by several of the older authors in 

 which the normal number of vertebrae appears to have been ex- 

 ceeded by four. Dr. Thirk, of Broussa, in 1820, described the fat- 

 tail of a Kurd, twenty-two years old, which formed a thick lump 

 and contained four surplus vertebrae. Tliomas Bartholinus, also, 

 told in the seventeenth century of a tailed boy who had more 

 than the regular number of vertebrae in the coccyx. Such cases 

 represent true atavistic formations, but have never been verified 

 with as much exactness as is desirable, altliough the possibility of 

 an appearance of the kind does not admit of reasonable doubt. 

 The phenomena might, in fact, be more frequently recorded were 

 it not that such formations, so long as they do not occasion dis- 

 tress, are carefully concealed for fear of reproach falling upon 

 those who bear them and upon their mothers. 



Dr. Bartels makes some pertinent remarks concerning the 

 bearing of these exceptional but not at all rare tail formations 

 among men upon the myths of " tailed races " ; and Mohnike has 

 made a valuable collection of the travelers' stories on the subject 

 from the most ancient times. Mohnike believes that the older 

 myths generally relate to apes; but this is not very probable, for 

 the erect anthropoids, which most resemble man, are as tailless as 

 he. The derivation from the custom of many savages of wearing 

 animal skins with the tail hanging down upon the right side is 

 more probable. Schweinfurth also observed among the women 

 of the Bongos a custom of wearing a palm -leaf tail, bound on so 

 as to produce a naturalistic appearance. 



* A fuller description may be found in the Zeitsehrift fiir Ethnologie, vol. xi, 1879. 



