and this property has been proved, in one case, to be inherited. In the outer fold of the ear there is sometimes a projecting point, corresponding in position to the pointed ear of many animals, and believed to be a rudiment of it. In the alimentary canal there is a rudiment—the vermiform appendage of the caecum—which is not only useless, but is sometimes a cause of disease and death in man; yet in many vegetable feeding animals it is very long, and even in the orang-utan it is of considerable length and convoluted. So, man possesses rudimentary bones of a tail concealed beneath the skin, and, in some rare cases, this forms a minute external tail.
The variability of every part of man's structure is very great, and many of these variations tend to approximate towards the structure of other animals. The courses of the arteries are eminently variable, so that for surgical purposes it has been necessary to determine the probable proportion of each variation. The muscles are so variable that in fifty cases the muscles of the foot were found to be not strictly alike in any two, and in some the deviations were considerable; while in thirty-six subjects Mr. J. Wood observed no fewer than 558 muscular variations. The same author states that in a single male subject there were no fewer than seven muscular variations, all of which plainly represented muscles proper to various kinds of apes. The muscles of the hands and arms—parts which are so eminently characteristic of man—are extremely liable to vary, so as to resemble the corresponding muscles of the lower animals. That such variations are due to reversion to a former state of existence Mr. Darwin thinks highly probable, and he adds: "It is quite incredible that a man should, through mere accident, abnormally resemble certain apes in no less than seven of his muscles, if there had been no genetic connection between them. On the other hand, if man is descended from some ape-like creature, no valid reason can be assigned why certain muscles should not suddenly reappear after an interval of many thousand generations, in the same manner as, with horses, asses, and mules, dark coloured stripes suddenly reappear on the legs and shoulders, after an interval of hundreds, or more probably of thousands of generations."[1]
- ↑ Descent of Man, pp. 41-43; also pp. 13-15.
