io STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE 



a special action on the skin and superficial parts or appendages 

 which the skin may develop. In man, what is known as "goose-skin/' 

 results from fear, or, it may be, from the effects of cold. The little 

 papillae of the skin stand out more prominently in consequence of 

 the contraction of minute muscles. When the hair " stands on end," 

 the phenomenon is due to a similar cause, namely, the action of the 

 small muscles attached to the hair-sacs. In birds these muscles are 

 found to be very largely developed, and are used for the erection 

 and depression of the feathers ; so that it forms a curious but 

 veritable truth of biology, that the symptoms of fright in humankind 

 simply form an exhibition of feeble and diminished powers which 

 are seen in the full flush of their development in birds and in other 

 vertebrates. 



But the list of the skin-muscles, which man possesses in a 

 rudimentary state as legacies from a far back ancestry, is by no 

 means exhausted, or even fully illustrated by the foregoing observa- 

 tions. There are two muscles in man which have always excited 

 attention from their anomalous nature. The one muscle is called 

 the occipito-frontalis, and may be described as the great scalp-muscle, 

 through the action of which certain persons are able to move the 

 hairy scalp backwards and forwards with great rapidity. Ordinarily, 

 we use this muscle to wrinkle our eyebrows, and to raise the eye- 

 brows in the act of expressing surprise. Whoever has seen a 

 Macaque monkey in a rage will require no further illustration of 

 the fact that the power of movement in the muscle just named is 

 possessed in all its typical development by the quadrumanous tribes. 

 In the monkeys, the brow can be deeply wrinkled, and the scalp is 

 made to contract under the influence of emotion with singular 

 dexterity. It is curious to observe that the power possessed by 

 some human beings over their scalps is capable of being transmitted, 

 like other features of bodily organisation, to posterity. Such a fact 

 illustrates very powerfully the innate and intrinsic nature of the 

 powers in question. Mr. Darwin tells us that M. A. de Candolle 

 communicated to him a very typical case of the transmission and 

 inheritance of an unusual power of using the scalp-muscle. The 

 head of a family, when a youth, could pitch several heavy books from 

 his head by the movement of the scalp alone ; and he won wagers 

 by performing this feat. His father, uncle, grandfather, and his three 

 children, possess the same power to the same unusual degree. This 

 family became divided eight generations ago into two branches ; " so 

 that the head of the above-mentioned branch is cousin in the 

 seventh degree to the head of the other branch. This distinct 

 cousin resides in another part of France, and on being asked 

 whether he possessed the same faculty, immediately exhibited his 

 power." The transmission of such a peculiarity merely illustrates 



