Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/362

348 the surprise that this discovery created among the European spectators, he informed us that his tail was the effect of climate, for that all the inhabitants of the southern side of the island, where they then were, were provided with like appendages." The cuneiform or Chaldean deluge tablet speaks of the gods, "with tails hidden," crouching down. A Culdee tombstone at Keills, in Argyleshire, Scotland, bears among its figures one of human form, sitting down, and sleeking with his left hand a tail that curls beneath his legs.

Various stories have been told of the tails of the Niam Niams of Central Africa, who have also been asserted to be cannibals. Their tails have been described as smooth and as hairy, as peculiar to the men, and as possessed by the men and women both. The most interesting and circumstantial account of this feature is given by Dr. Hubsch, of Constantinople, who examined a tailed negress. Her tail was about two inches long, and terminated in a point. The slave-dealer who owned her said that all the Niam Niams had tails, and that they were sometimes ten inches long. Dr. Hubsch also saw a man of the same race who had a tail an inch and a half long, covered with a few hairs; and he knew at Constantinople the son of a physician who was born with a tail an inch and a half long, and one of whose grandfathers had a like appendage. The phenomenon, he said, is regarded generally in the East as a sign of great brute force.

The newspapers, many years ago, had a story of a boy, who was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, with a tail about an inch and