301 
It is a matter of common knowledge that children almost 
habitually kneel up to go to sleep, and so bring all their limbs 
beneath them in a quadrupedal fashion. Dr Robinson has 
noticed this in the paper quoted. All my children have slept in 
this fashion as soon as they could shift for themselves, until 
they were about three years of age.* I know, however, of cases 
of adults who habitually go to sleep in this quadrupedal 
fashion ; although they usually turn in their sleep. Some fond 
parents, thinking their own reason superior to the child’s 
instinct, have gone to great lengths to break the child of this, 
as they thought, unnatural habit: more probably their efforts 
did much injury to the child’s nervous system. 
On RoupiIMeEnts. 
I may, perhaps, add a few notes on rudiments, although 
they have been elaborately treated by Darwin in his “ Descent 
of Man.” 
The ear is rudimentary so far as the outside portions are 
concerned—which are but remnants of the large ears possessed 
by animals. Darwin has called attention to the “projecting 
point,+”? which is common in man. It may be noted that the 
overhung ears of terriers afford us a very good idea of the 
process by which this point would come to be the only indi- 
cation of a formerly upright fold—first, the drop-over owing 
to disuse—second, reduction in size for the same reason. 
The power to move the ears which most animals possess in a 
very marked degree has been lost through disuse in the case of 
Man and the Anthropoid apes;{ but the muscles are present, 
only in a rudimentary condition. Sometimes they are slightly 
efficient in Man. I have a striking instance of this in the 
*When a baby is cross, nurses often quiet it by turning it on its stomach 
across their knees. 
+“ Descent of Man,” 2nd Edition, p. 11. 
¢ The external ears of many of the Anthropoid apes are smaller and more 
rudimentary than those of Man. 
