M ERISTIC VARIATION 



45 



far as the angle of the jaw. The opening is sometimes slight, 

 but often it extends completely to the pharynx. In the latter 

 case it is possible to pass an instrument the size of a small 

 quill, provided the opening is comparatively straight, otherwise 

 its completeness or incompleteness may be ascertained by the 

 injection of a liquid. 



Bateson quotes Fisher 1 as describing sixty-five persons with 

 seventy-nine fistulae. Fourteen of these were bilateral (occurring 



"x 



FIG. 6. Child with supernumerary auricle on each side of the neck. After 

 Bateson, from Birkett 



on both sides), and fifty -one were unilateral, of which thirty- 

 three were on the right side. He adds, " There was evidence of 

 heredity in twenty-one cases." 



Auricular appendages, often called supernumerary auricles, 

 are not at all uncommon. They are non-functional growths 

 occurring in the neighborhood of the ear but below it, and are 

 generally accompanied by some deformity of that organ. They 

 consist of little flaps of skin or, more commonly, of cartilaginous 

 growths identical in texture with that of the normal external ear. 



1 Bateson, Materials, etc., p. 175. Obvious errors in figures prevent further 

 quotations that would otherwise be of interest. 



