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 perfect 

 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 

 coccyx, as man's rudimentary 

 tail is termed, is undoubted. I 

 have on several occasions seen five rudimentary vertebrae 

 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 



FIG. 27. A Faun, to show 

 the goat-like tail. 



