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of the highest peaks of the Oberland, and had brought back six pairs of chamois' horns as the spoils of their rifles-we, as I soon discovered, being the "two gentlemen" in question, our achievements having been multiplied by rumour-these are incidents on which I cannot now enlarge.

One whimsical occurrence I must be allowed to chronicle, inasmuch as it elicited a spark of wit from Charley, whose powers I had fancied to be chiefly physical. The joke was this. Somebody had written in the Travellers' Book of the inn a warm eulogium of some maizecake, on which, washed down by some of that terrible Vin d'Asti, he seemed to have feasted with so much satisfaction that he felt it his duty to recommend the two delicacies to future travellers. Accordingly Charley partook largely of both, and the result was an illness by which he was confined to the inn for a couple of days. This leisure he employed in concocting the following epigram of warning :—

Distrust this advice; for I find that, in summer, cake
Is bad for digestion, and red wine gives stomach-ache.
So with this commendation I cannot agree
Any more than the wine and cake did with me.

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"Only a woman's hair?"

Gage of fond trust,
Buried with stalwart forms,
Crumbling to dust.

"Only a woman's hair?"
Was this a gibe—
A bitter sneer ?-if so,

Shame on the scribe!

"Only a woman's hair?"
Was this a sigh
Borne on the midnight surge
Of memory?

"Only a woman's hair?"
Lo! there be times
When wailing music clings
To mocking rhymes.

"Only a woman's hair?"
Strange it appears

That he should nurse a jest
So many years.

"Only a woman's hair?"
Dead Stella's hair:
If he had meant a jest,
Why all that care?

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BUYING THE MISTLETOE IN COVENT GARDEN-BY S. L. FILDES.

IN

NOTES ON TAILS.

N the course of lectures which the distinguished naturalist, M. De Quatrefages, has been recently delivering in the Museum of Natural History at Paris, he made The Tail in Man and Animals the text of the greater part of one of his discourses. Have any of our readers ever seriously reflected on the question-What is a tail? If they have not done so, let them at once visit the nearest museum and examine the skeleton of any tailbearing animal with which they are familiar— say that of a horse, a dog, or a cat. They will without difficulty perceive that the framework of this organ is composed of a series of somewhat cylindrical bones, called vertebræ, attached end to end to each other, and gradually diminishing in size the more distant they are from the skeleton of the trunk or body of the animal. These little bones are a continuation of the spinal column, or socalled backbone, which is made up of similar vertebræ of larger size, and amongst its other uses especially serves to contain and protect the spinal marrow from which the nerves of sensation and motion are given off to the body at large. The spinal cord, however, does not extend into the tail-bones, but terminates in the region of the loins in a bunch of nervous threads, called from its shape, the cauda equina, or horse's-tail. A glance at the skeleton will show that the great variations in the length of the tail may depend upon either of the following causes,-1, The elongation of the individual caudal bones, or, 2, An alteration in their number.

The number of these bones varies extremely in different kinds of animals, and, even in closely allied races of the same animal, it is not constant. Thus, according to M. De Quatrefages, three closely allied animals of the canine race-the dingo, the terrier, and the bull-dog-have eighteen, twenty, and twentyone of these bones respectively, while there are dogs with three or only two caudal vertebræ, and with literally no tail whatever. As the natural existence of such dogs has been called in question by high authorities we are glad to find that the fact has been placed beyond further question by Baron Lecoulteux, one of the highest authorities in all points relating to dogs, who assured M. De Quatrefages not only that such animals existed, but that he had himself owned some of them. He added that he had ascertained by the following experiment that the absence of the tail is a charac

teristic of race, or what Mr. Darwin calls a racial character. He brought about a matrimonial union between a male and female tailless dog, and obtained a young family of tailless puppies (anourous puppies, as learned zoologists would term them). In the course of time these puppies mated with dogs possessing the ordinary appendage, and amongst the young families that resulted from these unions there were always a certain number of tail-less puppies. We thus have undoubted evidence that there is a distinct race of tailless dogs. Why some dogs should have tails of such length as almost to trail upon the ground, and other dogs should have no tail at all, is a question which we cannot answer; but the facts that the best approved French sporting-dogs have a mere rudiment of a tail, that the English sheep-dog has a very short tail, and that the true tail-less dog is especially valued by the cattle-drovers of France, clearly show that this animal's services to man depend mainly upon its head, and in no degree upon its tail.

M. De Quatrefages makes no reference to cats in his lecture on tails; but it may be mentioned that in the Isle of Man there is a distinct variety of tail-less cats, known as Manx cats and as they intermix with ordinary cats, that island contains these animals with tails of every possible variety of length up to the natural standard. It is a strange fact that the offspring of a male Manx cat and an ordinary female cat is much more likely to be tail-less than if the conditions were reversed, and the Manx cat were the mother. Of twenty-three kittens whose father was a Manx cat, seventeen were destitute of tails, while all the kittens produced under the opposite conditions had tails, although they were generally short and imperfect. (See Darwin's Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii., p. 66.)

The sheep presents even greater variations than the dog in relation to the size of the tail. In Norway and Shetland there is a race with very short tails; and Pallas the great traveller and naturalist assures us that in Persia, in Abyssinia, in Tartary, and on the borders of the Caspian shore are races which are almost entirely tail-less, the tail being reduced "to a little button;" while on the other hand there is a species known as the ovis longicauda, and having a wide geographical distribution, in which the tail has been known to attain a weight of thirtythree pounds. This enormous mass is made up chiefly of fat, and is so cumbrous that its

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If, then, some of our domestic animals present such extreme variations in the length of the tail, the question naturally suggests itself, Can man, who is constructed on the same general plan with other mammals, ever present an analogous variation? There is no anatomical impossibility in the supposition, for we also possess rudimentary tail-bones, known in the human skeleton as the coccygeal bones, and forming the lower end of the spinal column. If these little bones, which are rudimentary vertebræ, were increased in number, a bona fide tail would be the result. Moreover, as M. De Quatrefages observes, "in the embryonic state, every human being has a tail, fully as long as that of the puppy, at the corresponding period of development; consequently, all that is required for the production of a tail is the occurrence of one of those phenomena which are commonly termed prolongations of development, consequent on arrest of metamorphosis. There is no possible reason why such a phenomenon should not occur here; and there is nothing absurd in the supposition that the human coccyx, (which is composed of the union of the coccygeal vertebra,) instead of ceasing to grow, as is usually the case, should in exceptional cases tinue to grow so as not merely to be apparent in the adult, but to possess a length proportioned to that which it always attains in the embryo."

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There is, thus, nothing impossible in the idea of a human tail; and that point being settled, the question arises, are there, or have there ever been, undoubted cases of men with this appendage. The evidence at first sight is far the more abundant for than against tails; but unfortunately the witnesses in favour of tails often break down during examination. have little difficulty in finding A, who swears that he has seen B, who has a tail; but we have never been able to catch B himself, and put him, tail and all, into the scientific witnessbox. Pliny, Claudius Ptolemy, and other early writers, frequently refer to men with tails. Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, states that he met with such men in Central Asia ; and Struys, the Dutch traveller, saw them in Formosa in the seventeenth century. Το come to more recent times, Sonneret, in the latter half of the last century, describes them as existing at Mendanao, in Africa, while Gemelli found them in the Moluccas, De Maillet in Barbary, and Ribiero in America. Gronovius, who lived for fifteen years in

Borneo, assured the celebrated French navigator, Dumont d'Urville, in the present century, that he had seen many persons with tails of from one to two inches in length. Ducouret declares that he has seen a similar case in an African at Mecca; and the son of the Sultan of Fezzan assured Isidore Geoffroy, the eminent physiologist, of the existence of men with this peculiar characteristic. After quoting these authorities, M. De Quatrefages adds that he has received analogous statements, not, indeed, from an actual eye-witness, but from a man on whose veracity he places implicit faith, and who states that the existence of men with tails is recognised as a fact in Egypt; and lastly, that M. Le Saint, a well-known scientific traveller, shortly before his death, which occurred a few months ago, while travelling in Central Africa, wrote to tell him of an individual with a caudal appendage whom he had seen in Upper Egypt, and who intended to visit Europe. This tail had, however, not turned up in Paris when the lecture was delivered.

In addition to the cases quoted by M. De Quatrefages, the following evidence in favour of tails may be adduced :

Purchas, in his Pilgrimmes, writing of the Philippine Islands, in 1613, says, "Lambri, the next kingdom, hath in it some men with tayles like dogges, a spanne long." And of Sumatra, "they say that there are certayn people there who have tayles like to sheep.'

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Purchas alludes to a belief that "some Kentish men" are tayled,* and these Kentish men's tails are referred to by Bulwer in his Man Transformed, 1653, who further tells us on the authority of an honest young man in Lieutenant-General Ireton's regiment that on the storming of Cashel, during the Commonwealth, when nearly 700 were put to the sword, there were found amongst the slain of the Irish divers that had tails nearly a quarter of a yard long. Forty soldiers testified upon their oaths that they were eye-witnesses to what they

swore.

Captain Turner, in his Embassy to Tibet, 1806, reports that he was told by the Daib Raja that in the mountains north of Assam there was a species of human beings with

* The Golden Legend says that St. Augustine came to a certain town, supposed to be Stroud in Kent, "which refused his doctrine and preaching utterly, and drove him out of the town, casting on him the tails of thornback and like fishes; wherefore he besought the Almighty to show his judgment on them, and He sent to them a shameful token, for the children that were born after in the place had tails, as it is said, till they had repented them." A similar story of Thomas à Becket is given by Bailey in his Dictionary, article Tails, and by Lambarde in his Perambulation of Kent-both of whom labour to free the Kentish men from the imputation of being "long-tails.”

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