shapes as well as in the structure of their principal organs, an evident
inferiority, if one compares them with the Primates, and beyond all
with Man.”
Science, therefore, at the present hour, ceases to go hack to the
long-exploded and (considering the epoch of its advocates) over-satirized
notions of Monboddo, Rousseau, or Moscati.™ Such historical
theory only continues to afford pabulum for homily-writers, who,
groping still amidst Auguste Comte’s177 suh-metaphysical strata,
imagine, not perhaps unreasonably, that some of their readers have
learned nothing since the XVIIIth century. Even in the time of
Voltaire — to whom men merely seemed to be so many monkeys
without tails—of the apparently tail-less quadrumana (Orang, Chimpanzee,
and Gorilla), but one species (except, of course, Tyson’s
Chimpanzee, 1698,178 and Buffon’s, 1740) was known to France;
and that one, the Orang-utan,—belonging to the prince of Orange,
1776 — too imperfectly for him to perceive, between the “ lord of
creation” and his caricature, a still closer analogy: or, again, for the
immortal bugbear of pseudo-pietists to comprehend that, if the
absence of such exterior appendage in the above three primates does
not the more constitute a true “monkey,” neither does its presence,
in the several authentic examples cited by Lucas,179 the less constitute
a true “man.” So that, while man, as “ the sole representative
of his genus,- possesses no tail, there are individual instances that
bring the case much nearer home than the interesting fact for
which the latest English partisan of suoeessive transformations180 encountered
obloquy ; viz. : that “ the bones of a caudal extremity exist,
in an undeveloped state, in the os coccygis of the human subject.”
Why, if such “ deviations” as that melancholy case of the “porcupine
family,” or those worn-out specimens of “ sexidigital individuals,”
176 Z im m e rm a n , Zool. géog., p. 1 9 4 .
177 Cours de Philosophie Positive, Paris, 1830; I, pp. 3 - 5 .
178 M a r t in , Man and Monkeys, London, 8vo., 1841 ; pp. 3 7 9 and 402.
179 Hérédité Naturelle, I, pp. 319-20 :—referring to S e r r e s , and to Is. G e o e . S a i n t H i l a i r e .
“ Le développement congénial de oet appendice (a tail) se lie en effet an rapport très-constant,
qu’il ( S e r b e s ) a démontré, entre l’évolution de la moelle épinière et celle de la queue.
La moelle épinière se prolonge, dans l’origine, jusqu’à l’extrémité du canal vertébral, chez
tous les animaux de la classe où il existe, et tous, à cette époque de la vie embryonaire, sé
trouvent ainsi munis d’une queue plus ou moins longue selon qu’ultérieurement, et d’après
les especès, le prolongement de la moelle se maintient ou se retire, l’axe vertébral est ou
n’est pas pourvu d’un appendice caudal. * * * Et il arrive ainsi quelquefois (says I. G,
S t . H i l a i r e ) que la moelle épinière, conservant sa première disposition, s’étende encore,
chez l’homme, au moment de la naissance, jusqu’à l’extrémité du coccyx. Dans ce cas, la
colonne vertébrale reste terminée par une queue.”
180 Vestiges of Creation, 1st New York edition, 12mo, p. 1 4 8 . In speaking of “ apparently
%il-less monkeys,” it may be well to refer to the skeletons of Orang-satyrus, Troglodytes
niger, and Gorilla Gina, in G e r v a is , op. cit., pp. 1 4 , 2 6 , 32 .
have been paraded by every monogenist, from Zimmerman181 to Prichard,
182 in proof of how a new race of men might, according to them
originate — why, I repeat, do they not observe consistency of argument,
whilst always violating théir own law of “ species”—« e permanency
of normal type—and allow that a Parisian saddler,1« or the
late Mr. Barber of Inverness,181 might and ought to have procreated
entire generations of new human “ species” with tails ? Partial is the
umty-school tp natural analogies, accusing polygenists of tendency
to disregard them. Our “ chart of Monkeys,” further on, will at
least show that I am not obnoxious to this grave charge.
In the interim, there are but two living savans, that I am aware of
the one a naturalist and courageous voyager;185 the other, if not
exactly an archaeologist, a much more famous champion of orthodoxy;
188 — who believe in the existence, past or present, of whole
nations decorated with tails. The former, when at Bahia, heard, from
the veracious lips of imported Haoussa negroes, of thé “ Niams-
mams,™_ou hommes à queue;” who still whisk their tails in Africa
about thirteen days’journey from ETano (not far from that Island
181 Op. cit., p. 172.
Reieanh“ into the Physical History of Man, 1st edition, 1813; pp. 72-5: — In the 2d
editionfo p . cit., 1826, I, pp. 204-7), Prichard found out that the “ porcupine family” was
flourishing m its 3d generation ! , J
“»Lucas, op. R I, pp. 137-8, 820-2. Instances of homines caudali: the celebrated
corsair Cnmlher de la Cioutat, of a negro named Mohammed, of a French officer, of M.
de, Barsabar and his sister, and, lastly, of an attorney at Aix, sumamed Bérard, whose
pig’s ¡9 °aSe Sohenoku M°™‘ror. hist, memorab., II, 34) the curly shape of a
H Compare MoEnonno, Of the Origin and Progress of Language, Edinburgh, 8vo, 2d ed
/ I Pp; 258~69’ for th<* men Witt long tails at Nicobar! But the following is less
û-poc yp a : “ And I could produce legal evidence, by witnesses yet living, of a man in
Inverness, one Barber, a teacher of mathematics, who had a tail, about half a foot long
which he carefully concealed during his life ; but was discovered after his death, which
Happened about twenty years ago.” (P. 262, note.)
185 De Castelhau, in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, Juillet, 1851 p 26 Camels
IT n0t intr0duced int0 U S Qntil Ptolemaic times (Types of Mankind,
PP- O . 511-13, 729). Those seen by M. de Castelnau’s narrator, close by “ les hommes
queue, must have been stray-aways from Tuarik, Foolah, or Arab encampments; be-
■ T W Ê S $> raoe has eTer perceived the Value of this animal, nor adopted its use,
H ° T for eentnries employed against them by their surrounding oppressors ; thus allow-
g a stupid repugnance to testify to their own intellectual inferiority (Conferre d ’E ic h t h a l ,
Bist, et Origine des Foulahs, Paris, 8vo., 1841 ; pp. 259-60, note).
188 P a r a v e t , op. cit., A 852, p p . 3 4 , 501.
hîH T\T “ Nlams-Niams ” are fabulous (like the Yahoo enemies of the virtuous Houy-
I M i 5 ™ “ «“ “'bel®, by different Negro tribes “ severally called Remrcn, Lemlem,
no 1 1 1 n M r l OT N ’yUmn (W’ DeSBOROTJGH Coom^ Negro-land of the Arabs, 1841 •
Written t a T IT 0N’ ° tia L°nd0n’ 1849 ! P- 125> Since this was
a 8» a ’ T r e m a d x , the latest explorer of the upper Nile (with Brus-Rollkt
/. d' T n merohant at Ahartoom), has, still more recently, exploded the notion of “ là
W e s à queue” in that region also.