THE DESCENT OR OBIGIN OF MAN 47 



there is nearly as much diversity in the teeth as in the fea- 

 tures. The chief arteries so frequently run in abnormal 

 courses that it has been found useful for surgical purposes 

 to calculate from 1,040 corpses how often each course pre- 

 vails.' The muscles are eminently variable: thus those of 

 the foot were found by Prof. Turner' not to be strictly alike 

 in any two out of fifty bodies; and in some the deviations 

 were considerable. He adds, that the power of performing 

 the appropriate movements must have been modified in 

 accordance with the several deviations. Mr. J. Wood has 

 recorded* the occurrence of 295 muscular variations in 

 thirty-six subjects, and in another set of the same number 

 no less than 558 variations, those occurring on both sides 

 of the body being only reckoned as one. In the last set, 

 not one body out of the thirty-six was "found totally want- 

 ing in departures from the standard descriptions of the mus- 

 cular system given in anatomical text-books." A single 

 body presented the extraordinary number of twenty-five 

 distinct abnormalities. The same muscle sometimes varies 

 m many ways: thus Prof. Macalister describes' no less than 

 twenty distinct variations in the palmeris accessorius. 



The famous old anatomist, Wolflf,' insists that the inter- 

 nal viscera are more variable than the external parts : Nulla 

 particula est quce non aliter et aliter in aliis se habeat homini- 

 bus. He has even written a treatise on the choice of typical 

 examples of the viscera for representation. A discussion on 

 the beau-ideal of the liver, lungs, kidneys, etc., as of the 

 human face divine, sounds strange in our ears. 



The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in 

 men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences 

 between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not 

 a word need here be said. So it is with the lower animals. 



' "Anatomy of the Arteries," by R. Quain. Preface, vol. i.. 1844. 

 ■* "Transact. Royal Soc. Edinburgh," vol. xxiv. pp. 175, 189. 

 » "Proc. Eoyal Soc," 1867, p. 644; also 1868, pp. 483, 524. There ia a 

 previ(>iis paper, 1866, p. 229. 



• "Proc. R. Irish Academy," vol. x., 1868, p. 141. 

 ' "Act. Acad. St. Petersburg," 1778, part ii. p. 217. 



