68 HOMO V. DARWIN. 



Homo. I should like, my Lord, to see the man with a 

 tail. It is singular enough, if such a creature ever existed, 

 that anatomists have not possessed themselves of his 

 skeleton. We may be sure that, if one existed now, 

 Barnum would have got hold of him long ago. Why, it 

 would make the fortune of a showman to be able to exhibit 

 a man with a tail. Crowds would flock to see hitn. 

 He would be regarded as a curiosity even among 

 savages. 



Lord C. I fear it will not be easy to produce such a 

 specimen of humanity. The friends of a Homo caudatus 

 would be very likely to remove the appendage, unless, 

 indeed, they meant to make capital out of the thing. I 

 think, therefore, Mr. Darwin, you must produce either the 

 commodity itself alive, or tangible evidence of its existence, 

 ere we can accept the statement of the French gentleman 

 you refer to. 



Homo. I believe, my Lord, Yoltaire once said that a 

 Frenchman is a cross-breed between a tiger and a monkey. 



Lord C. Meaning thereby, I presume, that the average 

 Frenchman is too often, in character, a compound of 

 frivolity and ferocity. But Mr. Darwin states that, "at an 

 early embryonic period, the os coccyx projects beyond the 

 lower extremities." 



Homo. I presume, my Lord, that is because the parts 

 that eventually surround it are not, at the early period 

 referred to, sufficiently developed. 



Darwin. "The os coccyx," my Lord, "is short, usually in- 

 cluding only four vertebrse ; and these are in a rudimental 

 condition, for they consist, with the exception of the basal 

 one, of the centrum alone. They are furnished with some 

 small muscles ; one of which, as I am informed by Pro- 

 fessor Turner, has been expressly described by Theile as a 



