Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/372

358 surplus length of chorda persists without there being any vertebræ formed upon it.

Real vertebral tails, in which the vertebra-containing part of the embryonal tail remains without being grown over and the coccyx preserves its original straighter direction, have been, if we may trust the older anatomists and physicians, not very rarely observed. Surgeon-General Ornstein, a few years ago, carefully studied such a case in Athens in a Greek from Livadia, twenty-six years of age. There was in this case a conical tail, free only at the tip, about two inches long, within which three vertebræ might be felt by pressing upon it. It did not, however, hang perpendicularly down, but the coccyx was slightly, though less than in normal cases, bent inward. Notwithstanding its apparent firmness, this little movable tail was not distinguishable by the color of its skin from its surroundings. It was hairless, although the sacral region was very hirsute. The free part was not half as long as the whole. While only three shrunken vertebral fragments could be felt in this case, free tails of like character have been described by several of the older authors in which the normal number of vertebræ appears to have been exceeded by four. Dr. Thirk, of Broussa, in 1820, described the fattail of a Kurd, twenty-two years old, which formed a thick lump and contained four surplus vertebræ. Thomas Bartholinus, also, told in the seventeenth century of a tailed boy who had more than the regular number of vertebræ in the coccyx. Such cases represent true atavistic formations, but have never been verified with as much exactness as is desirable, although the possibility of an appearance of the kind does not admit of reasonable doubt. The phenomena might, in fact, be more frequently recorded were it not that such formations, so long as they do not occasion distress, are carefully concealed for fear of reproach falling upon those who bear them and upon their mothers.

Dr. Bartels makes some pertinent remarks concerning the bearing of these exceptional but not at all rare tail formations among men upon the myths of "tailed races"; and Mohnike has made a valuable collection of the travelers' stories on the subject from the most ancient times. Mohnike believes that the older myths generally relate to apes; but this is not very probable, for the erect anthropoids, which most resemble man, are as tailless as he. The derivation from the custom of many savages of wearing animal skins with the tail hanging down upon the right side is more probable. Schweinfurth also observed among the women of the Bongos a custom of wearing a palm-leaf tail, bound on so as to produce a naturalistic appearance.