Merycism Regarded in the Light of Atavic Tendency. 535 
(about 116 in all, I believe) does not warrant such conclusions 
as I choose to draw from them; secondly, that there never 
were any profound anatomical changes demonstrated, which 
would lend strength to the assumption that merycoles were 
products of the latent tendency to revert to ancestral types. 
As to the first objection, let me ask how are we to know that 
the small number of cases reported represents even 
approximately the actual number that have existed and 
exist at the present day? Might we not justly surmise, 
from the very nature of the phenomenon, that an untold 
number of merycoles have lived and still live their long and 
natural lives amidst the mass of teeming humanity without 
ever having awakened to the consciousness of deviating in any 
manner from the physiological norm?* Raphael Blanchard, 
who is a congenital merycole, is a good case in illustration. 
The peculiarity of his condition never dawned upon him until 
a text-book of human physiology had come into his hands; 
but for that incident, his case might never have been placed 
on record. The other objection I will meet by adducing the 
biological fact that physiological or functional changes always 
precede those of an anatomical orstructural nature. Thus were 
the semi-carnivorous incisor and canine teeth of the Artiodak- 
tylaand Perissodaktyla subjected to gradual structural changes, 
after the animals had begun to feed on food of a different 
nature. The close relationship between structural arrange- 
ment and functional requirement is beautifully illustrated by 
the stomach formation of the new-born of the Selenodonta 
or Ruminantia, now extant.{ Instead of the four compart- 
ments that we find in the adult animal there is but one fully 
developed, and that is the abomasus with its enzyme secreting 
mucous surface; the rumen, reticulum and omasus attain 
their full development during the first period of the animal’s 
* The strong plausibility of this assumption has been forcibly impressed 
upon my mind since the reading of this report. A gentleman of high 
Scientific repute, upon hearing of my case, volunteered the information that 
he had been a merycole for a long time. His case has never been recorded. 
Stedman, “Article on Rumination,’’ Reference Handbook of the Medi- 
cal Sciences, Vol. VIII. ; 
+ Wiedersheim, Lehrbuch der Vergleichenden Anatomie der Wirbel- 
thiere, 1886. 
