HUMAN RESEMBLANCES TO LOWER LIFE. ir 



the existence of that variation in living beings to which we owe all 

 our supremacy over lower forms. Acting in one fashion, it is this 

 variation, aided by use and " selection," which deprives us of the 

 powers possessed by the muscles of lower life. In another aspect 

 of its operation, it is this same principle of variation which, acting 

 through " reversion " or the return to former and lower states, renews, 

 within the children of light and leading, the traits of the ancestry of 

 those far back aeons when the world of life was but in its teens. 



More extraordinary still, is the history of the second of the " skin- 

 muscles," to which allusion has been made. In lower animals is 

 found a peculiar muscle which rejoices in the name of the panniculus 

 carnosus. When we see a lively porpoise disporting itself in the 

 waves, rolling head over heels, and otherwise exhibiting that pro- 

 pensity for aquatic gambols which is a characteristic of its race, we 

 may credit the muscle just named, with a full share of work in pro- 

 ducing the movements of the lithe fish-like frame. It would not be 

 incorrect to describe the body of the porpoise as being literally 

 swathed in this great muscle, so thoroughly developed are its pro- 

 portions in that animal. When that modest but bristly quadruped 

 the hedgehog contrives in a moment of surprise to roll head and tail 

 together, and to present an impregnable surface to the gaze of his 

 enemy, human or canine, as the case may be, we must credit his 

 " panniculus " with the work of suddenly transforming him from an 

 active quadruped into an inanimate ball of spines. A dissection of 

 a hedgehog would show us that the great skin-muscle can be split 

 into nine pairs of muscles, and that one of these pairs represents the 

 " scalp-muscle " of humanity. Or again, when we see the horse 

 " shaking his coat," or the retriever dog which has just left the sea, 

 sending the water from off his skin in the effective fashion of his race, 

 we are simply witnessing the action of the " panniculus "-muscle in 

 another phase of its action. 



Ascending now to humanity, how, let us inquire, is the "pan- 

 niculus " developed in man, and what are the functions it can 

 be shown to possess? As our previous studies will have led us 

 to expect, the " panniculus " of man exists, firstly, in a condition 

 which may truly be described as "rudimentary" when compared 

 with its development in lower life. The "scalp-muscle" has just 

 been noted to represent part of the " panniculus," which in man 

 thus becomes split up into separate and detached portions. Another 

 part of the great "skin-muscle" of the hedgehog is found in that 

 muscle which in human anatomy receives the name of the pla- 

 tysma. This latter muscle exists as a broad sheet of fibres, lying 

 just beneath the" skin on each side of the neck. In man it serves to 

 wrinkle the skin of the neck, and it also aids in depressing the 

 lower jaw. In other parts of man's body, traces of the division of 



