82 



NA TURE 



[Dec. 4, 1873 



are due to the zeal and ability of my colleagues. Thus, Mr. 

 R. L. Jack has the merit of detecting and trac ng the Caradoc 

 basin of the Leadhills, and of working out the structure of that 

 region which has been of so much service in the subsequent 

 progress of the Survey. Mr. Jolin Home has carried the lines 

 far into Galloway, and Mr. D. R. Irvine has traced them across 

 a great part of Wigtownshire. Mr. H. Skae has mapped them 

 across Dumfriesshire into Selkirkshire, while Mr. B. N. Peach, 

 besides doing excellent service in the west, is now running them 

 across the rest of the country towards the sea on the east. 



Allow me also on the part of my colleagues, as well as for 

 myself, to take advantage of this opportunity to thank Prof. 

 Harkness for his most valuable and welcome papers, and to 

 express our gratification that the labours of the Survey should 

 have found so courteous an exponent, and one whose knowledge 

 of the country which we have mapped is so minute and ex- 

 tensive. Arch. Geikie 



The Huemul 



In Vol. viii. p. 253 of your valuable journal, I find it 

 noticed that the Chilian Exploring Expedition hastjken a speci- 

 men of the Huemul, an animal which had altogether been lost 

 sight of, and fir.st described by Molina under the name o{ Eqiius 

 bisuhns. This notice is not correct, as the animal has been de- 

 scribed already inai846 by Messrs. Gray and Gervais, in the An- 

 nates dtr scient. natur. iii. Ser. Tom. v. page 91, under the name 

 of Cervus ckiUnsis, and compared with C. antisicnsis of 

 D'Orbigny, as the species most nearly allied to the Huemul or 

 Guemul or Guamel, different names for the same animal in 

 different parts of the country. This first description was re- 

 peated the following year in the " Historia fisica y Politica de 

 Chile," Zoology, vol. i. page 159, ant accompanied by the figure 

 of the animal (pi. 10, and its skull pi. 11), from the only 

 known specimen of a young male of half-grown size, brought 

 to Paris by Mr. Gay. On the same specimen Mr. Pucheran 

 has founded his description in his valuable monograph of the 

 genus Ctrvus, published in the Archives dii Museum, vol. vi. 

 page 965 (1862), and from these two descriptions Mr. A. Warner 

 has given a combined extract in his " Saugethiere," &c. 

 Tom. v. (supplement), page 3S2, under the same name of 

 Cen'Ks chiknsis. Meanwhile Dr. J. E. Griy had described a 

 species of deer, received by the Earl of Derby from Chili as 

 Cei-Jus Utu-otis (An-a.\\s of Nat. Hist, ii., Jer. Tom. v. page 324, 

 1840, and Proceed. Zool. Soc, 1849, page 64, pi. 12), which 

 name he soon changed to Furcifer Hiiamcl {knmX^ chr. iv. 

 427), and at last to Xenclaphiis huamcl, adding to his first de- 

 scription new notices, with the figures of the horns of the male 

 (Proceed. Zool. Soc, 1S69, page 496), and the skull of the 

 female, and stating that his Cervus leucotis is identical with the 

 Ceiiius chilensis of Gay. This exposition proves that the Huemul 

 or Guemul is already a very well known animal, and has by no 

 means been overlooked by naturalists. 



A young collecbr in Buenos Ayres, Mr. Franc Moreno, has 

 lately received a pair of these animals from Patagonia, where they 

 were caught by the Indian Pehnelches, who live on the wes- 

 tern foot of the Cordilleris, near the sources of the rivers 

 Negro and Colorado. These two specimens have been brought 

 to the public Museum, where I have examined them carefully. 

 The male is a young one, with horns still covered by the skin, and 

 only 3 in. long, without branches. I regret that thf refore I can 

 say nothing about the figure of the adult's horns, which are accord- 

 ing to the drawing given by my dear friend. Dr. Gray, very like 

 that of the roebuck, although the specimen he has figured 

 may be regarded as in an abnormal state, from the great difference 

 between their two sides. Both sexes of the animal are of 

 equal size — 3 ft. high on back, and 4! ft. long, the head being 

 10 in. long, the ears and the neck 7 in. every one, and the body 

 3 ft. without the tail, which measures 7 in. with its haii s, but 

 only 4 in. in the axis. Great naked lachrymal pits are seen below 

 the eyes. The fur is of the same quality in each, but very different 

 in the cold and in the warm seasons ; then both skins are in the 

 time of hairing, the female with the prevailing hair of the winter, 

 and the male with the prevailing of the summer. Each hair is 

 not entirely straight, but some are undulated, principally on 

 the under half, and this undulated portion has a clear 

 greyish-brown colour ; over this clearer portion comes a broad 

 dark-brown or black ring, and the end is clear reddish yellow, 

 with a fine blackish tip, generally broken off in old fur. For 

 the winter dress the hairs are 2 in. to 2.^ in. long, and of a less cha- 

 racteristic colour, being over the whole skin of an undistinguished 



greyish-brown colour ; but in the summer dress the hairs mea- 

 sure no more than i j in. or \\ in., and all their colours are cleaner 

 and better pronounced. Therefore the animal is darker and 

 more distinguished in colour in the summer than in the winter. 

 The hairs on the face are very short, as are those on the outside of 

 the ears, somewhat longer on the legs, but nearly as short on the 

 under half part of the extremities. The breast and the tail have 

 the longest hairs. Different in colour are the nakel nose and 

 upper lip, both entirely black ; the breast is dark blackish-brown, 

 the genital region to the tail, with the inside of the hinder 

 upper legs being white. The same colour also pervades the inside 

 of the ears, which are coated with long hairs ; the hoofs are 

 black. No tinge of the particular stripe of longer haire on the 

 tarsus of the hinder legs is conspicuous in either sex ; but I 

 find, with Dr. Gray, a large tuft of longer hairs on the hock, on 

 the inside behind, which makes this part of the legs very thick. 



The animal lives principally in the valleys of the Cordilleras, 

 but on both sides, the eastern and the western, and rarely goes 

 down to the fiat country of the Argentine pampas. Its proper 

 range is between 35" and 45°. It is well known by the 

 Indians, who not only make use of its strong skin for war- 

 dress, and its meat for food, but also tame young animals, 

 using them for domestic employment, like the Guanaco, which 

 lives in the same t;rritory, but is much more common, and 

 therefore almost the only animal used for hunting by the same 

 people. 



Buenos Ajres, Sept. 20 Dr. Burmeister 



The Diverticulum of the Small Intestine considered as 

 a Rudimentary Structure 



I MUST claim the opportunity of reply to the article which ap- 

 peared in your number of October 16 (vol. viii p. 509), entitled 

 " On the Appendix Vermiformis and the Evolution Hypothesis," 

 which the writer offers as a commentary on my little paper at the 

 recent meeting of the British Association, *' On the Diverticulum 

 of the Small Intestine considered as a Rudimentary Structure." 



The writer seems to have been misled by newspaper reports. 

 None of these were furnished by me, or submitted to me before 

 publication, and in those which I saw after their publication both 

 the anatomy and the argument were grossly and indeed absurdly 

 blundered. This applies not only to my paper and remarks, but 

 to the remarks made by those who spoke on my paper. It was, 

 perhaps, too much to expect newspaper reporters not to get con- 

 fused among scientific terms, and I may have erred in not having 

 the usual abstract of my little p.aper ready to hand to therepoiters. 



Newspaper reports may be passed without notice, but I can- 

 not allow an article in a scientific periodical to pass in which the 

 writer uses such language as the following, with which the article 

 in your columns concludes ; — 



" To quote the words of one of the greatest of oar physiolo- 

 gists, it can only bring ignominy on the boly of scientific workers 

 it they are supposed to countenance such an arg_mient as that of 

 Prof. Slruthers, which assumes that because one or two indivi- 

 duals have died from the impactation of cherry-stones in the ap- 

 pendix vermiformis, therefore there is no God ! " 



The "no God " was certainly not in my paper or in anything 

 I have ever written or spoken, and the accusation is to me so 

 offensive that I repudiate it with indignation. How anyone 

 should suppose that the evolution hypothesis implies that there is 

 *'no God" I am at a loss to understand. I supposed it to be 

 well understood that, on the contrary, that great hypothesis 

 enables us to rise to higher conceptions, the only question being 

 the mode of proceeding. 



As to the scientific argument, it seems hopeless to at'empt to 

 unravel the confusion into which newspaper reports and my critic 

 have brought it, except by re-stating my argument. But this is 

 for the most part unnecessary after your publication of my ab- 

 stract in the number following that in which the article of which I 

 complain appeared. It cannot be absolutely proved that the appen- 

 dix vermiformis is useless, though a survey ol the facts in compara- 

 tive anatomy and development leads to the inference that it is a 

 rudimentary structure. But my paper was on the diverticulum, 

 the appendix being referred to only collaterally, and more for the 

 sake of clearing away the most unnece-sary teleology with which 

 it has been encru.sted, than with the view of resting tlie argument 

 on it. The diverticulum, like the appendix, h.as glands and mus- 

 cular layers, secretirig and expelling ; it has villi, actively absurb- 

 ing ; and it is large, which the appendix is not. ^'ct, notwith- 

 standing all this elaborate construction and this actix'ity, who will 

 maintain that this unclosed bit of the vitelline duct has been left 



