68 The Dancing Mouse 



of responsiveness to sounds, this investigator concluded that 

 plugs of wax which he had noticed in the auditory meatus 

 of the dancer excluded sounds or in some way interfered with 

 the functioning of the tympanic membrane. Kishi reports 

 that he found such plugs of wax in the ears of one gray mouse, 

 but in none of the dancers which he examined did he discover 

 them (21 p. 479). ' Panse's explanation of the defective hear- 

 ing of the dancer neither needs nor deserves further comment. 



As one result of his investigation, Kishi is convinced that 

 the dance movements are not due to peculiarities in the semi- 

 circular canals and their sense organs, as Rawitz claimed, 

 for the general form and finer structure of these organs in the 

 dancer is practically the same as in the common mouse. 

 Kishi is just as certain that the whirling is not due to defects 

 in the canal organs, as Rawitz is that it is due to such struc- 

 tural conditions ! It is rather surprising that any one should 

 feel confident of the power of the microscope to reveal all 

 those structural conditions which are important as conditions 

 of function. Probably there are histological differences 

 between the ear of the dancer and that of the gray mouse, 

 which, although undetectable by scientific means at present, 

 furnish the structural basis for the marked differences in 

 behavior. As has been set forth already (p. 9), Kishi ac- 

 counts for the dance movements by assuming the inheritance 

 of an acquired character of behavior. This inherited ten- 

 dency to dance, he thinks, has been accentuated by the con- 

 finement of the mice in narrow cages and their long-continued 

 movement in the wheels which are placed in the cages (21 

 p. 481). 



Rawitz, Cyon, and Alexander and Kreidl felt themselves 

 under the necessity of finding peculiarities of behavior in 

 the dancer which could be referred to the various abnormal- 

 ities of structure which they had either seen or accepted on 



