Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/163

 Bismarck. The Germans have always shown me great favor, electing me one of the Archive Committee of the Deutsche Gesellschafft and an honorary member of the Canstatter Volksfest Verein and of the Maennerchor, and when they erected a statue of Schiller in Fairmount Park, I delivered the oration.

I have certain physical peculiarities. When a rabbit is seen sitting upon his haunches it will be observed that he is continually spreading wide his nostrils. No doubt this power was a physical advantage to animals enabling them to increase their scent and thus learn of the presence of enemies or prey. I have the power of voluntarily using the muscles which dilate the nostrils. I likewise have control of the muscles which spread the toes of the feet, thus, to some extent, making them prehensile. Darwin, who spent much time in gathering facts from which like inferences may be drawn, had not discovered these and I wrote him a letter calling his attention to them. He replied in an autograph note expressing recognition of the value of these facts in elucidation of his theory.

One of the descendants of Edward Lane, a beautiful woman, became the wife of Lieutenant A. J. Slemmer, who, at the outset of the War of the Rebellion, acquired fame through his command of Fort Pickens in Florida, which was one of the two forts, the other being Fort Sumter in South Carolina, retained by the North in the seceded states. Soon afterward Slemmer died and she went over to England and there married Professor Jebb, the celebrated Greek scholar connected with Oxford University. Then she sent for her niece, and this niece married George, the son of Sir Charles Darwin. At the time of the dinner given by the American Philosophical Society to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Franklin, Sir George Darwin, who was there with many other scientists, came over to me and said: “My wife, who is here, tells me that you and she are cousins.” She sat in the Rh