368 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 194 



near Fort Wingate. N. Mex. He is about thirty- 

 five years of age, and comes from a Mormon family, 

 and is polydactylous upon both hands. His father's 

 hands were normal ; but his father's twin-brother 

 had bud-like, nailless, supernumerary little fingers, 

 without any bones in them. There are fourteen 

 children in his father's family, seven of whom have 

 normal hands, while the remaining seven have either 

 a surplus number of fingers or toes. A sister older 

 than himself had both extra little fingers and toes, 

 but they had no bones in them : indeed, he is the 

 only one of the children that possessed them in that 

 degree of perfection. Two sisters younger than him- 

 self had supernumerary little fingers and toes, and 

 two of his younger brothers had simply the boneless 

 little fingers, while their feet were normal. There is 

 no history of polydactylism on his mother's side, and 

 he has no recollection of the condition prior to his 

 father's twin-brother. 



I carefully examined these additional little fingers 

 in the man in question, and present with this letter, 

 in fig. 1, the palmar aspect of his left hand, the 

 member upon which it was best developed. It has 

 two joints, the distal one being somewhat flexed upon 

 the proximal one when the hand is at rest ; but, as 

 the finger is supplied by both a good flexor and ex- 

 tensor tendon, it can be readily moved independent 

 of the normal digits. These tendons, as well as I 

 could ascertain, were branch offshoots of the tendons 

 of the flexor sublimis digitorum and the extensor 

 minimi digiti respectively. 



The proximal head of the first phalanx articulates 

 with an extra metacarpal head, which branches from 



the metacarpal bone of the little finger proper, to the 

 outer side of its own distal head, and rather on the 

 external aspect of the side of the shaft. No doubt 

 the arterial supply of this extra little finger corre- 

 sponds to the similar branches of the deep and super- 

 ficial palmar arches, and an offshoot from the little- 

 finger branch of the posterior carpal at the back of 

 the hand, which go to the little finger proper. 



A perfectly formed nail is found upon both of these 

 supernumerary digits ; though in some particulars 

 the extra digit of the right hand is not as near like 

 a normal finger as the one I have figured on the left, 

 more especially in points of mobility and size. 



Several years ago I saw a very remarkable case of 

 polydactylism in a man of about forty-five years of 

 age, an ignorant Irish farm-hand ; and I could get 

 nothing of the history of the inheritance of it from 

 him. This man (P. M.) had, articulating with the 

 distal head of the proximal phalanx of pollex, two 

 small and supernumerary thumbs, which faced each 

 other, as I have drawn them in fig. 3. Each of these 

 had two joints and perfect nails, and was evidently 

 supplied with special branch slips of tendons; as I 

 have frequently seen the man use them as a kind of 

 pair of forceps, and pick up, if he chose, his pipe 

 with tbem. If I recollect rightly, both hands vvere 

 similarly deformed. The only other record I have 

 ever made of this case was in 1872, when I drew a 

 rough sketch of it for Prof. Burt G. Wilder at Ithaca, 

 who was at that time interested in such matters, and 

 making a special collection of such data, and defor- 

 mities of these members. 



Supernumerary thumbs occur elsewhere on the 

 hand, as in the case I have drawn in fig. 3. This 

 was a boy schoolmate of mine (J. O D.), now a promi- 

 nent artist in New York, and it was early removed 

 during childhood by amputation If I remember 

 correctly, his father's and mother's hands were per- 

 fect, and the deformity only occurred upon one of 

 his own hands. 



Among the vertebrates below man, we occasionally 

 meet with cases of polydactylism. and in all verte- 

 brates, as we know, numbers of cases where we find 

 duplicature of entire limbs. R. W. Shupeldt. 



Fort Wingate, N. Mex., Oct. T. 



Psychology of the bear. 



In Science for Aug. 27 is an interesting letter from 

 James P. Marsh upon the psychology of the polar 

 bear. The following item, bearing upon the same 

 subject, is going the rounds of the press, and may be 

 of interest to those familiar with the ways of animals 

 in general, and bears in particular : A bear had been 

 having a merry time among the sheep of the farmers 

 of Clarendon, New Brunswick, during the suaimer. 

 All attempts to catch the beast failed. Last week a 

 trap was set, and a fence erected so that he would 

 have to step into the trap in order to get at the bait. 

 Bruin surveyed the situation, and concluded, after 

 some study, that he could get over better. He went 

 to the rear of the enclosure, dug a deep hole under 

 the trap, and then overturned it, thus securing the 

 bait without any injury to himself. Not to be out- 

 witted by a bear, the farmers tried again. The old 

 trap was left where it was, and another placed where 

 the bear got through before. The ruse worked like 

 a charm. Bruin came along, snuffed at the bait, and, 

 recollecting his previous success, determined to try 

 the back entrance. He did not see the second trap, 



