5i2 General Notes. [June, 



learn that the human face, which we admire when withdrawn 

 under a high intellectual forehead, is perhaps the most remarka- 

 ble of all the indices that point out man's inferiority. In the mam- 

 malian embryo the face is formed under the fore brain or cerebral 

 hemispheres. In our faces the foetal disposition is permanently re- 

 tained, with changes, which when greatest are still inconsiderable. 

 In quadrupeds the facial region acquires a prominent development 

 leading to the specialization of the jaws and surrounding parts, 

 which brings the face to a condition much higher than that of 

 the foetus. Hence the projecting snout is a higher structure than 

 the retreating human face. These facts have long been familiar to 

 anatomists, but I am not aware that the inferiority of the human 

 to the brute countenance has heretofore been considered a scien- 

 tific conclusion by any one. Yet that inferiority is incontroverti- 

 ble and almost self-evident. 



The preceding statements render it clear to the reason, that man 

 is not in all respects the highest animal — and that it is a prejudice 

 of ignorance, that assumes that the specialization of the brain 

 marksman as above all animals in the zoological system. It 

 does give him a supremacy by his greater power of self-main- 

 tenance in the struggle of the world, but that has nothing what- 

 soever to do with his morphological rank. There is nothing in 

 morphology that anywise justifies assigning, as is actually done, 

 an almost infinitely greater systematic value to the specialization 

 of the brain and a specialization of the limbs, stomach, teeth, face, 

 etc., hence it is impossible to call man even the highest mammal. 

 It is also doubtful whether mammals would be regarded as the 

 highest class of the animal kingdom, were they not our nearest 

 relatives. Let *us beware of claiming to be the head of organic 

 creation, since the Carnivora and Ungulata are in many respects 

 higher than we. I believe that it is just as unscientific to call any 

 one animal species the highest, as to pitch upon any one plant to 

 stand at the head of the vegetable kingdom.— C. S. Minot. 



Zoological Notes.— Mr. Chas. Linden, in a paper in the Bul- 

 letin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, states that the wood 

 duck is easily domesticated, Mr. Irvin having raised successive 

 broods of that species for many years, amounting frequently to 

 thirty or more full-fledged young in one season. All the various 

 ducks he experiment' I .\ ard each autumn, and 



infallibly returned with a male mate, which remained until the 

 young began to hatch. The observations recorded indicate that the 

 majority of our wild ducks do not easily change their wild condi- 

 tion, but yet manifest no aversion to breeding freely when placed 

 under artificial restraint. Mr. Fewkes has described in the Amer- 

 ican Journal of Science for February, a Cercaria T V inch long, found 

 swimming with a jerky motion by means of a long tail 

 intervals has bundles of long setae arranged on opposite sides Ji ' 

 those of an annelid. Mr. Fewkes in ^ ding that in the possession 



