EVOLUTION OF THE NOSE 49 



stitute the habitual attitude of his mind. And by 

 the habitual indulgence of any emotion the features 

 will become habituated to the expression of it, and 

 so the set of our features comes at last to express 

 our prevailing and dominant emotions ; in other 

 words, our character. 



But let us return to the evolution of the nose. In 

 these days of universal " Nature study " nobody 

 need be told that the practice of breathing through 

 the nostrils was introduced by the amphibians and 

 reptiles. The former (frogs and toads) take to it 

 only when they come of age, but lizards, snakes 

 and all other reptiles do it from infancy. But 

 the nose is not yet. That is something too delicate 

 to come out of a cold-blooded snout covered with 

 hard scales. Birds, too, by having their mouth 

 parts encased in a horny bill seem to be debarred 

 from wearing noses. And yet there is one primeval 

 fowl, most ancient of all the feathered families, 

 which has come near it. I mean the apteryx, that 

 eccentric, wingless recluse which hides itself in the 

 scrub jungles of New Zealand. Its nostrils, unlike 

 those of every other bird, are at the tip of its beak, 

 which is swollen and sensitive ; and Dr. Buller says 

 that as it wanders about in the night it makes a 

 continual sniffing and softly taps the walls of its 

 cage with the point of its bill. But the apteryx is 

 one of those odd geniuses which come into the 

 world too soon, and perish ineffectual. Its kindred 

 are all extinct, and so will it be ere long. 



