ANTHROPOLOGY IN TllK LxVST TWENTY YEARS. 569 



negro must have beeu produced by a kind of retrograde movement. 

 There are to be found such retrograde uioveineuts whether we believe 

 it or not. If for instance a cliikl has the nose of his grandfather we 

 say that atavism is clearly existing, and everybodj^ is satisfied with it. 

 But if the six fingers are traced back to the six i-ays of the fins of a 

 ray it is looked upon as an imputation. There are great difficulties 

 connected with this subject which can be overcome only by means of 

 heroic effort. I refer especially to the relation between atavistic pecul- 

 iarities and those acquired by external circumstances. Acquired pe- 

 culiarities are not atavistic, even when they prove to be hereditar3^ 



During recent years a subject has been very popular which I would 

 recommend for further study, viz, the tailless cats. On the island of 

 Man there is found a race of cats without tails. It has not as yet beeu 

 explained whether these cats are indebted for their taillessness to a 

 fault of their original parents and by reason of acquired characteristics 

 are propagated in this way or whether there has intervened a disturb- 

 ance in their development. As to the fact of this taillessness there is 

 no doubt, for we find very frequently' similar occurrences at other places, 

 e.g., in Scotland, but how this heredity has taken its rise is entirely 

 unknown. Perhaps the original mother was run over by a wagon and 

 in this way lost her tail and then brought forth tailless cats ! 



We do not even know how far this law of heredity extends. On ac- 

 count of this uncertainty the question becomes very complicated in its 

 relation tohuman circumstances. Climate and life may influence human 

 development, although at present no convincing reasons can be given 

 which show such a change in respect to human beings living in our age 

 either in their totality or as individuals through the influence of local 

 climate prevailing at their homes. In these particulars then we are 

 deficient to-day in our knowledge. You may possibly say that it is a 

 strange thing to have gone backward and to know less than people 

 knew twenty years ago. 



We know indeed less, but it is our pride that we have our knowledge 

 in such a shape that we really know what we claim to understand. 

 Twenty years ago many things were supposed to be known when people 

 were really ignorant of them. We have made this supposed knowledge 

 the object of scientific tests and natural science has now really taken 

 possession of its wide domain, and we can now say that much that was 

 formerly asserted to be true is no longer admissible. It was supposed 

 by faith, but it never belonged to science. Now the question before us 

 is whether it is not possible with all the auxiliaries to observation and 

 experiment to discover a kind of plan in the natural history of man. 

 Whether we shall ever get to a point where we can show that the liolne of 

 the negro was the submerged laud, which according to English zoolo- 

 gists was the original home of man, the so-called Lemuria, or that this 

 place was the river Rhine, where some claim to have found the most an- 

 cient remains of primitive man ; — all this we leave for our successors to 

 decide after another twenty years shall have passed. 



