1897.] OF HAIR UPON THE HUMAN EAR. 307 



anything as to the shape, position, and movements of the ancestral 

 ear? 



As to shape, it seems unUkely that the ear was obtusely pointed 

 as in Loris and Cynoceplialns, for had not the point been originally 

 at least as sharp as it is in Macacus it would hardly have persisted 

 until now. 



As to position and mobility : was the ear pressed as closely to the 

 head as in most living Apes, and had it as little mobility as theirs ? 



Darwin ascertained ' that neither the Orang nor the Chimpanzee 

 ever erects or moves its ears. I have seen Macacus niaurus move 

 its ear slightly, and some men retain this power, although it is 

 questionable whether this movement is due to the extrinsic muscles 

 of the organ, as Darwin appears to have believed ", or to the 

 contraction of the scalp. It is certain that beyond the power 

 possessed by many persons of moving their ears simultaneously 

 with their eyebrows and the skin of the nape, some few can move 

 the whole ear quite independently of the scalp ; and I have observed 

 a case in which the upper half of the ear could be vibrated at will, 

 either rapidly or slowly, whilst the lobe and lower half of the same 

 organ, the eyebrows, and scalp remained motionless. 



Whether these movements are due to the muscles of the ear or no, 

 such muscles exist in Man, and their existence argues past use in 

 our ancestral form. As a matter of fact the external ear in both 

 Man and the Quadrumana is an atrophied organ in several respects, 

 mobility for one. But evidence of mobility is foreign to the 

 present enquiry except as affording concurrent testimony as to the 

 conditions of the ancestral ear, which almost certainly moved freely. 

 A freely moving ear must needs project, and a projecting ear is 

 exposed and seems to require (and usually possesses) a special hairy 

 covering of its own. To-day the normal human ear is almost hair- 

 less, frequently indeed quite nude. It is practically sessile. 

 Whether at one time it projected laterally seems a fair subject for 

 investigation, and to this question the existence of hairs upon its 

 back affords a clue. 



Where the ear is pressed closely to the head as in most of the 

 Quadrumana, its back is almost naked : it was quite bare in the 

 Gibbon which I examined. An ear thus placed is obviously pro- 

 tected from weather either by the fur in which it is embedded, as in 

 the Gibbon, or by the long tresses which fall over it from the sides 

 of the head in the Orang and Chimpanzee ^ Even the thick short 

 bristly hair of the Gorilla affords an eiEcient protection, and it is 

 not easy to get sight of the back of its ears, even when the ear is 

 handled. A special hairy covering for an ear so placed is needless, 

 a tuft in the orifice to exclude rain being all that is needed and 

 usually all that exists. Except a very few weak hairs in Gorilla, 

 the Anthropoids have lost the hair upon the back of the ear so far 

 as my observations extend, which is not far, for Anthropoid Apes 



' ' Descent of Man,' 1871, i. p. 21. 



' Ibid. p. 20. 



^ Trogiodiften calvus, as its name implies is bald. 



