THE SKELETON 



axial continuation of the vertebral column. Twelve years later, 

 when the caudal appendage had reached the length of 12'5 cm., 

 these could still be detected. 1 



I have to thank my friend and colleague, Professor G. B. 

 Howes, for the knowledge of the 

 third case. 2 It is described in the 

 Scientific American of May llth, 

 1889, p. 296, where an engraving 

 taken from a photograph is also 

 given. Fig. 19 is a copy of this, 

 and represents a young Moi, twelve 

 years old, who possessed a tail- 

 like appendage 1 foot in length, 

 and soft and smooth to the touch. 

 As no skeletal elements could be 

 felt, a prolongation of the vertebral 

 column was certainly not present. ' 

 It cannot therefore be considered 

 a true tail, and this conclusion ap- 

 plies to a large number of similar 

 formations which have erroneously 

 been regarded as tails [some of 

 which are purely pathological and 

 due to spina bifida]. 



With regard to the number 

 of caudal vertebrae definitively 

 formed in Man, Steinbach has ar- 

 rived at the following conclusions, 

 after working upon a great ac- 

 cumulation of material. 



The male embryo, from the end of the second month of intra- 

 uterine life, has five post-sacral vertebrae; and indications of com- 



1 It is important also to note that similar reversionary formations have occasion- 

 ally been observed in the Anthropoid Apes (Gorilla and the Orang), and this is the 

 more remarkable, as in the latter the degeneration of the os coccygis, which consists 

 as a rule of only three vertebra, has gone still further than in Man. [It is worthy 

 of remark here that this same maximum reduction of the caudal vertebrae to three 

 occurs also in some Bats, and that the opposite extreme for the mammalian series is 

 reached by a small insectivore from Madagascar (Microgale longicaudala) and the 

 long- tailed Pangolin (Manis macrura) of the old world, in which the caudal vertebrae 

 may be close upon fifty in number. ] 



2 [And I, in turn, have to thank my friend Professor Johnson Symington, of 

 Queen's College, Belfast, in conversation with whom my attention was first drawn 

 to this case. G. B. H.] 



'Fio. 19. "TAILED" CHILD, Moi, 



AGED TWELVE. 



