of the muscular system given in anatomical text books. A single body
presented the extraordinary number of twenty-five distinct
abnormalities. The same muscle sometimes varies in many ways: thus
Prof. Macalister describes (6. Proc. R. Irish Academy, vol. x. 1868,
p. 141.) no less than twenty distinct variations in the palmaris
accessorius.
The famous old anatomist, Wolff (7. Act. Acad. St. Petersburg, 1778,
part ii. p. 217.), insists that the internal viscera are more variable
than the external parts: Nulla particula est quae non aliter et aliter
in aliis se habeat hominibus. He has even written a treatise on the
choice of typical examples of the viscera for representation. A
discussion on the beau-ideal of the liver, lungs, kidneys, etc., as of
the human face divine, sounds strange in our ears.
The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same
race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of
distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said. So
it is with the lower animals. All who have had charge of menageries
admit this fact, and we see it plainly in our dogs and other domestic
animals. Brehm especially insists that each individual monkey of those
which he kept tame in Africa had its own peculiar disposition and
temper: he mentions one baboon remarkable for its high intelligence;
and the keepers in the Zoological Gardens pointed out to me a monkey,
belonging to the New World division, equally remarkable for
intelligence. Rengger, also, insists on the diversity in the various
mental characters of the monkeys of the same species which he kept in
Paraguay; and this diversity, as he adds, is partly innate, and partly
the result of the manner in which they have been treated or educated.
(8. Brehm, Thierleben, B. i. ss. 58, 87. Rengger, Saugethiere von
Paraguay, s. 57.)
I have elsewhere (9. Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication, vol. ii. chap. xii.) so fully discussed the subject of
Inheritance, that I need here add hardly anything. A greater number of
facts have been collected with respect to the transmission of the most
trifling, as well as of the most important characters in man, than in
any of the lower animals; though the facts are copious enough with
respect to the latter. So in regard to mental qualities, their
transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic
35