S08 ME. II. 31. WAI/L1& ON lUE GBOAVlH [Mar. 2, 



are neither abundant nor easy to examine. Their ears seem 

 subject to much variation, 



Man alone exhibits in infancy and reproduces in hiter life the 

 ancestral hairy coat of the ear — a fact from which we may perhaps 

 infer that at one time his ears had sufficient lateral projection to 

 need other and more constant protection from the weather than the 

 hair of the scalp afforded. 



The shape of the head of our ancestor who had pointed ears is 

 not kuowji, but it is highly improbable that his skull was of the lofty, 

 domed, Caucasian tvpe. If it were long and low, somewhat after 

 the style of the Eocene Adapis, the ears would be set much higher 

 in the head than our.-;, and would get no protection from any hair 

 growing upon the scalp. 



Several coutributary pieces of evidence suggest that the external 

 ear is an organ diminished by disuse. Thus, it is no longer func- 

 tional ; it varies extremely and constantly in shape and size and in 

 other particulars. It is by its position exposed to sunburn, frost- 

 bite, and injuries of all kinds, yet it is ill-supplied with nerves of 

 sensation and has a poor supply of blood. Consequently it heals 

 slowly when cut. One might compare our external ear to an outpost 

 once important, but now no longer essential, from which the 

 garrison is withdrawing. 



My friend Dr. Hurry, of Reading, points out that the hairs on 

 the ears of both dark-haired and red-haired persons, already 

 referred to, are lighter than the general tone of the hair of the 

 head and cheeks. He suggests that this may result from some 

 deficiency of colouring-matter, which is in itself one process of 

 degenerati<)n. I have, however, too little evidence on this point 

 to warrant my doing more than indicating a line worthy of further 

 enquiry. 



Eut evidences of degeneration are, for the purposes of this 

 enquiry, negative testimony; let us seek for something positive as 

 a clue to ancestral shape and size. 



The most puzzling feature seems to be the abrupt countermarch 

 of the hairs upon the back of the heJiv. No anthropoid or other 

 quadrumanous animal, so far as my limited observations extend, 

 shows anything analogous. The arrangement is useless, is not 

 ornamental, but is so persistent that one is driven to believe that its 

 history, if decipherable, would throw light upon the condition of 

 the organ in past times. 



The theory which I propound upon this growth is submitted 

 \\ith extreme diffidence. 



This countermarch is in its incipience simply a divergence or 

 radiation of the lines of growth of the hair, such as is found upon 

 all funnel-shaped hairy ears where the diameter increases outwards 

 from a short tubnlar covcha to a larger expansion. This radiation 

 is fouud among the hairs on the back of the human ear, the growth 

 starting spirally at the junction of the head and concha, and diverg- 

 ing outwards, some to the one side of Darwin's Point, some to the 

 other (see Plate XIX. figs. 2 & 3). 



