54. EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. 
rence of tails in men is mainly attributable to the 
mistakes which have been made by incompetent ob- 
servers in reporting, as tails, structures which had no 
right to such a title, and it will be useful for us to 
consider the various forms of true tails and the appen- 
dages which may be mistaken for them. 
We may, with Virchow, divide 
tails into two classes, true and 
false. True tails are of two 
varieties : the most perfect tails 
are composed of bony segments 
directly continuous with the 
vertebral column, as in the case 
of monkeys, horses, dogs, cats, 
lions, &c. The less “petiecs 
variety is like that of the pig, 
soft and flexible. That man 
has descended from ancestors 
which possessed tails there can 
be little reasonable doubt, and 
that children are occasionally 
== born with one and even two 
= extra bony segments to the 
FIG. 27.—A Faun, to show 
the goat-like tail. 
coccyx, as man’s rudimentary 
tail is termed, is undoubted. I 
have on several occasions seen five rudimentary vertebra 
in a child’s coccyx. 
It must also be remembered that this portion of the 
vertebral column may be more prominent than usual and 
project like a tail, yet on dissection contain but the 
normal number of bony elements ; whilst in other cases 
