ON THE PITHECOID TYPE OF EAR IN MAN. 



HOWARD AVERS. 



There have been relatively few contributions to our knowl- 

 edge of the development of the external ear in man which 

 give enough attention to such details as would render them 

 useful to the anthropologist. For this and other reasons the 

 following observations on the condition of the external ears in a 

 three-months full-blooded negro foetus will doubtless be of inter- 

 est, since they show in such an unmistakable manner the occur- 

 rence of a pithecoid ear in the human embryo, and thus give 

 additional force to the conclusion derived from a study of com- 

 parative anatomy that the human races have descended from a 

 Simian condition of structure. As Professor G. Schwalbe has 

 already pointed out,^ there are two methods which we may use 

 in arriving at a knowledge of the past history of the human ex- 

 ternal ear. The first one, the method of comparative anatomy, 

 has been most successfully employed, largely on account of 

 the greater abundance of material for study ; while the second 

 method, that of embryology, has as yet yielded fewer results. 

 Sometimes one, sometimes the other method gives us the 

 best information regarding special facts, and it is only by the 

 use of the knowledge gained from both sources that we may 

 hope to reconstruct the phylogenesis of the human ear. 



Schwalbe has carried out the analysis of the mammalian ear 

 from the comparative anatomical standpoint in a masterly way, 

 and has shown that the Darwinian point, far from being ot 

 rare occurrence in civilized man, is present in three-fourtho of 

 all male ears and in nearly three-fourths of all male individuals, 

 whereas it is present in less than one-half the total number of 

 female individuals and in only about one-third of the whole 

 number of female ears examined. 



1 Schwalbe, G., " Beitrage zur Anthropologic des Ohres," Iiiternat. Beitrdge 

 zur wiss. Med'iciii. Bd., i. 1891. 



