HEAD OF SATYR IN GROUP OF MARSYAS AND APOLLO, NAPLES MUSEUM, SHOWING CERVICAL AURICLES.
Now bearing in mind this account of the origin of ears, an extraordinary circumstance confronts us. Ears are actually sometimes found bursting out in human beings half way down the neck, in the exact position—namely along the line of the anterior border of the sterno-mastoid muscle—which the gill-slits would occupy if they still persisted. In some human families where the tendency to retain these special structures is strong, one member sometimes illustrates the abnormality by possessing the clefts alone, another has a cervical ear, while a third has both a cleft and an ear,—all these of course in addition to the ordinary ears. This cervical auricle has all the characters of the ordinary ear, “it contains yellow elastic cartilage, is skin-covered, and has muscle-fibre attached to it.”[4]
FAUN FROM THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, SHOWING CERVICAL AURICLES.
Dr. Sutton further calls attention to the fact that on ancient statues of fauns and satyrs cervical auricles are sometimes found, and he figures the head of a satyr from the British Museum, carved long before the days of anatomy, where a sessile ear on the neck is most distinct. A still better illustration may be seen in the Art Museum at Boston on a full-sized cast of a faun belonging to the later Greek period; and there are other examples in the same building. One interest of these neck-ears in statues is that they are not as a rule modelled after the human ear but taken from the cervical ear of the goat, from which the general idea of the faun was derived. This shows that neck-ears were common on the goats of that period—as they are on goats to this day—but the sculptor would hardly have had the daring to introduce this feature in the human subject unless he had been aware that pathological facts encouraged him. The occurrence of these ears in goats is no more than one would expect. Indeed one would look for them not only in Man, but in all the Mammalia, for so far as their bodies are concerned all the higher animals are near relations. Observations on vestigial structures in animals are sadly wanting; but they are certainly found in the horse, pig, sheep, and others.
FORM OF THE EAR IN BABY OUTANG.—FROM “DARWIN AND AFTER DARWIN”