16 THE DESCENT OF MAN, 



"Why these animals, as well as the progenitors of man, 

 should have lost the power of erecting their ears, we cannot 

 say. It may be, though I am not satisfied with this view, 

 that owing to their arboreal habits and great strength they 

 were but little exposed to danger, and so during a length- 

 ened period moved their ears but little, and thus gradually 

 lost the power of moving them. This would be a parallel 

 case with that of those large and heavy birds, which, from 

 inhabiting oceanic islands, have not been exposed to the 

 attacks of beasts of prey, and have consequently lost the 

 power of using their wings for flight. The inability to 

 move the ears in man and several apes is, however, partly 

 compensated by the freedom with which they can move the 

 head in a horizontal plane, so as to catch sounds from all 

 directions. It has been asserted that the ear of man alone 

 possesses a lobule; but " 2l rudiment of it is found in the 

 gorilla;"* and, as I hear from Prof. Preyer, it is not rarely 

 absent in the negro. 



The celebrated sculptor, Mr. "VVoolner, informs me of 

 one little peculiarity in the external ear, which he has often 

 observed both in men and women, and of which he per- 

 ceived the full significance. His attention was first called 

 to the subject while at work on his figure of Puck, to 

 which he had given pointed ears. He was thus led to ex- 

 amine the ears of various monkeys, and subsequently more 

 carefully those of men. The peculiarity consists in a little 

 blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin, 

 or helix. When present, it is developed at birth, and, ac- 

 cording to Prof. Ludwig Meyer, more frequently in man 

 than in woman. Mr. Woolner made an exact model of one 

 such case, and sent me the accompanying drawing. (Fig. 2. ) 

 These points not only project inward toward the center of 

 the ear, but often a little outward from its plane, so as to be 

 visible when the head is viewed from directly in front or 

 behind. They are variable in size, and somewhat in position, 

 standing either a little higher or lower ; and they sometimes 

 occur on one ear and not on the other. They are not con- 

 fined to mankind, for I observed a case in one of the spider- 

 monkeys {A teles Beelzebuth) in our Zoological Gardens; 

 and Mr. E. Ray Lankester informs me of another case in a 

 chimpanzee in the gardens at Hamburg. The helix ob- 



*Mr. St. George Mivart, *' Elementary Anatomy," 1873, p. 396. 



