The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

Something analogous to the appearance we have just remarked may be observed in the pig, complicated, however, by a fresh phenomenon. Here the normal foot bears two small rudimentary lateral toes, and two medial toes, each with its own hoof. Now in certain races, already known to the ancients, a third medial toe is developed, and the whole is enveloped in a single hoof. Instead of being cloven-footed, which is the normal type of the species, the race becomes solidungulate.

Nothing of this kind is ever seen in man. In every race the feet maintain their ordinary composition, in the Bosjesman as in the Patagonian. Some teratological exceptions with a tendency to heredity are nevertheless occasionally displayed, of which we shall speak in another chapter.

VII. The vertebral column is, so to speak, the fundamental portion of the skeleton, and yet it does not vary the less on that account. I shall not insist upon the differences presented by its caudal portion, merely remarking that there are races of dogs, sheep, and goats, in which the tail is so reduced as to be nothing more than a short coccyx.

The central portions themselves are known to be liable to change. Philippi tells us that the oxen of Piacentino had thirteen ribs instead of twelve, and, consequently, an extra dorsal vertebra. In the pig Eyton has observed the dorsal vertebræ vary from thirteen to fifteen, the lumbar from four to six, the sacral from four to five, and the caudal from thirteen to twenty-three, so that the total is forty-four in the African pig and fifty-four in the English pig.

In man, the presence of one extra vertebra has occasionally been observed. These have always been isolated cases, except in one Dutch family, quoted by Vrolich. But it does not approximate to a constant character in any human group, and if such a group did exist, it is evident that the variation would here again be less than in animals, for without even reckoning the tail, it is three times stronger in the latter.

Of course, I do not take into consideration what has been so often said of men asserted to have tails. We now know better how much credit to attach to this statement. But the variations which take place in the caudal region among animals teaches us that even a considerable elongation of the coccyx in a human group, and the multiplication of the vertebræ which compose it, must not be considered à priori as a specific character.

VIII. It might have been expected that the head would have escaped modifications, on account of the importance of the organs which belong to it. But such is not the case, and here again the modifications are much greater in animals than in man. Blumenbach remarked long ago that there was more difference between the head of a domestic pig and the wild boar than between that of the White and the Negro. There are no domestic species to which the same remark cannot be applied. But I shall only remind the reader of the heads of the bull-dog, greyhound and spaniel.

The extent to which the modifications of the head can be carried is nowhere more plainly shown than in the niata cattle of Buenos Ayres and La Plata. This ox exhibits the modifications of the specific characters similar to those which the bull-dog presents among dogs. All the forms are shortened and thickened, the head in particular seeming to have experienced a general movement of concentration. The inferior maxillary bone, although itself shortened, so far exceeds the superior in length that the animal is unable to browse the trees. The cranium is as much deformed as the face; not only are the forms of the bones modified, but also their relations, not one of which, according to Professor Owen, has been strictly preserved. This race, though perfectly established, is not therefore necessarily of less recent origin; for, as I remarked above, all the American oxen are descended from European stocks. It is already represented in the New World by two sub-races, one of which, that of Buenos Ayres, has preserved the horns, while that of Mexico has lost them.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that no human group presents anything at all analogous to this.

IX. The several facts which I have here enumerated seem to me sufficient to justify the proposition which I asserted at the commencement of the chapter, namely:—that the limits of variation are almost always more extensive between certain races of animals than between the most distant human groups.