remarkable. In all known Cetacea (unless _Platanista_ be really an
exception) a pair of slender bones are found suspended a short distance
below the vertebral column, but not attached to it, about the part where
the body and the tail join. In museum skeletons these bones are often
not seen, as, unless special care has been taken in the preparation,
they are apt to get lost. They are, however, of much importance and
interest, as their relations to surrounding parts show that they are the
rudimentary representatives of the pelvic or hip bones, which in other
mammals play such an important part in connecting the hind-limbs with
the rest of the skeleton. The pelvic arch is thus almost universally
present, but of the limb proper there is, as far as is yet known, not a
vestige in any of the large group of toothed whales, not even in the
great cachalot or sperm whale, although it should be mentioned that it
has never been looked for in that animal with any sort of care. With the
whalebone whales, however, at least in some of the species, the case is
different. In these animals there are found, attached to the outer and
lower side of the pelvic bone, other elements, bony or only
cartilaginous as the case may be, clearly representing rudiments of the
first, and in some cases the second segment of the limb, the thigh or
femur, and the leg or tibia. In the small _Balænoptera rostrata_ a few
thin fragments of cartilage, imbedded in fibrous tissue attached to the
side of the pelvic bone, constitute the most rudimentary possible
condition of a hind-limb, and could not be recognised as such but for
their analogy with other allied cases. In the large rorqual,
_Balænoptera musculus_, 67 feet long, previously spoken of, I was
fortunate enough in 1865 to find attached by fibrous tissue to the side
of the pelvic bone (which was sixteen inches in length) a distinct
femur, consisting of a nodule of cartilage of a slightly compressed,
irregularly oval form, and not quite one inch and a half in length.
Other specimens of the same animal dissected by Van Beneden and
Professor Struthers have shown the same; in one case, partial
ossification had taken place. In the genus _Megaptera_ a similar femur
has been described by Eschricht; and the observations of Reinhardt have
shown that the Greenland right whale (_Balæna mysticetus_) has not only
a representative of the femur developed far more completely than in the
rorqual, being from six to eight inches in length and completely
ossified, but also a second smaller and more irregularly formed bone,
representing the tibia. Our knowledge of these parts in this species has
recently been greatly extended by the researches of Dr. Struthers, who
has published in the _Journal of Anatomy_ for 1881 a most careful and
detailed account of the dissection of several specimens, showing the
amount of variation to which these bones (as with most rudimentary
structures) are liable in different individuals, and describing for the
first time their distinct articulation one with the other by synovial
joints and capsular ligaments, and also the most remarkable and
unlooked-for presence of muscles passing from one bone to the other,
representing the adductors and flexors of mammals with completely
developed limbs, but so situated that it is almost impossible to
conceive that they can be of any use; the whole limb, such as it is,
being buried deep below the surface, where any movement, except of the
most limited kind, must be impossible. Indeed, that the movement is very
limited and of no particular importance to the animal was shown by the
fact that in two out of eleven whales dissected the hip-joint was firmly
anchylosed (or fixed by bony union), though without any trace of
disease. In the words of Dr. Struthers, “Nothing can be imagined more
useless to the animal than rudiments of hind-legs entirely buried
beneath the skin of a whale, so that one is inclined to suspect that
these structures must admit of some other interpretation. Yet,
approaching the inquiry with the most sceptical determination, one
cannot help being convinced, as the dissection goes on, that these
rudiments really are femur and tibia. The functional point of view fails
to account for their presence. Altogether they present for contemplation
a most interesting instance of those significant parts, rudimentary
structures.”
We have here a case in which it is not difficult to answer the question
before alluded to, often asked with regard to rudimentary parts, Are
they disappearing or are they incipient organs? We can have no
hesitation in saying that they are the former. All we know of the origin
of limbs shows that they commence as outgrowths upon the surface of the
body, and that the first-formed portions are the most distal segments.
The limb, as proved by its permanent state in the lowest Vertebrates,
and by its embryological condition in higher forms, is at first a mere
projection or outward fold of the skin, which, in the course of
development, as it becomes of use in moving or supporting the animal,
acquires the internal framework which strengthens it and perfects its
functions. It would be impossible, on any theory of causation yet known,
to conceive of a limb gradually developed from within outwards. On the
other hand, its disappearance would naturally take place in the opposite
direction; projecting parts which had become useless, being in the way,
would, like all the other prominences on the surface of the
whales,--hair, ears, etc.,--be removed, while the most internal,
offering far less interference with successful carrying on the purposes
of life, would be the last to disappear, lingering, as in the case of
the Greenland whale, long enough to reveal their wonderful history to
the anatomist who has been fortunate enough to possess the skill and the
insight to interpret it.
Time will not allow of more illustrations drawn from the structure of
existing Cetacea; we turn next to what the researches of palæontology
teach of the past history of the order. Unfortunately this does not at
present amount to very much. As is the case with nearly all other orders
of mammals, we know nothing of their condition, if they existed, in the
mesozoic age. Even in the Cretaceous seas, the deposits at the bottom of
which are so well adapted to preserve the remains of the creatures which
swam in them, not a fragment of any whale or whale-like animal has been
found. The earliest Cetaceans of whose organisation we have any good
evidence are the Zeuglodons of the Eocene formations of North America.
These were creatures whose structure, as far as we know it, was
intermediate between that of the existing sub-orders of whales, having
the elongated nasal bones and anterior position of the nostrils of the
Mystacocetes, with the teeth of the Odontocetes, and with some
characters more like those of the generalised mammalian type than of any
of the existing forms. In fact _Zeuglodon_ is precisely what we might
have expected _a priori_ an ancestral form of whale to have been. The
remarkable smallness of its cerebral cavity, compared with the jaws and
the rest of the skull, so different from that of modern Cetaceans, is
exactly paralleled in the primitive types of other groups of mammals.
The teeth are markedly differentiated in different parts of the series.
In the anterior part of both jaws they are simple, conical, or slightly
compressed and sharp pointed. The first three of the upper jaw are
distinctly implanted in the premaxillary bone, and so may be reckoned as
incisors. The tooth which succeeds, or the canine, is also simple and
conical, but it does not greatly exceed the others in size. This is
followed by five teeth with two distinct roots and compressed pointed
crowns, with denticulated cutting edges. It has been thought that there
was evidence of a vertical succession of the molar teeth, as in
diphyodont mammals, but the proof of this is not quite satisfactory.
Unfortunately the structure of the limbs is most imperfectly known. A
mutilated humerus has given rise to many conjectures; to some anatomists
it appears to indicate freedom of motion at the elbow-joint, while to
others its characters seem to be those of the ordinary Cetacea. Of the
structure of the pelvis and hind-limb we are at present in ignorance.
From the middle Miocene period fossil Cetacea are abundant, and
distinctly divided into the two groups now existing. The Mystacocetes,
or whalebone whales, of the Miocene seas were, as far as we know now,
only _Balænopteræ_, some of which (as the genus _Cetotherium_) were, in
the elongated flattened form of the nasal bones, the greater distance
between the occipital and frontal bones at the top of the head, and the
greater length of the cervical vertebræ, more generalised than any now
existing. In the shape of the mandible also, Van Beneden, to whose
researches we are chiefly indebted for a knowledge of these forms,
discerns some approximation to the Odontocetes. Right whales (_Balæna_)
have not been found earlier than the Pliocene period, and it is
interesting to note that instead of the individuals diminishing in bulk
as we approach the times we live in, as with many other groups of
animals, the contrary has been the case, no known extinct species of
whales equalling in size those that are now to be met with in the ocean.
The size of whales, as of all other things whose most striking attribute
is magnitude, has been greatly exaggerated; but when reduced to the
limits of sober fact, the Greenland right whale of 50 feet long, the
sperm whale of 60, and the great northern rorqual (_Balænoptera
sibbaldii_) of 80, exceed all other organic structures known, past or
present. Instead of living in an age of degeneracy of physical growth,
we are in an age of giants, but it may be at the end of that age. For
countless centuries impulses from within and the forces of circumstances
from without have been gradually shaping the whales into their present
wonderful form and gigantic size; but the very perfection of their
structure and their magnitude combined, the rich supply of oil
protecting their internal parts from cold, the beautiful apparatus of
whalebone by which their nutrition is provided for, have been fatal
gifts, which, under the sudden revolution produced on the surface of the
globe by the development of the wants and arts of civilised man, cannot
but lead in a few years to their partial if not complete extinction.
It does not need much foresight to divine the future history of whales,
but let us return to the question with which we started, What was their
probable origin?
In the first place, the evidence is absolutely conclusive that they were
not originally aquatic in habit, but are derived from terrestrial
mammals of fairly high organisation, belonging to the placental division
of the class,--animals in which a hairy covering was developed, and with
sense organs, especially that of smell, adapted for living on land;
animals, moreover, with four completely-developed pairs of limbs on the
type of the higher vertebrata, and not of that of fishes. Although their
teeth are now of the simple homodont and monophyodont type, there is
much evidence to show that this has taken place by the process of
degradation from a more perfect type, even the fœtal teeth of whalebone
whales showing signs of differentiation into molars and incisors, and
many extinct forms, not only the Zeuglodons, but also true dolphins, as
the Squalodons, having a distinct heterodont dentition, the loss of
which, though technically called a “degradation,” has been a change in
conformity to the habits and needs of the individuals. So much may be
considered very nearly, if not quite, within the range of demonstrated
facts, but it is in determining the particular group of mammals from
which the Cetacea arose that greater difficulties are met with.
One of the methods by which a land mammal may have been changed into an
aquatic one is clearly shown in the stages which still survive among the
Carnivora. The seals are obviously modifications of the land Carnivora,
the Otariæ, or sea-lions and sea-bears, being curiously intermediate.
Many naturalists have been tempted to think that the whales represent a
still further stage of the same kind of modification. So firmly has this
idea taken root that in most popular works on zoology in which an
attempt has been made to trace the pedigree of existing mammals, the
Cetacea are definitely placed as offshoots of the Pinnipedia, which in
their turn are derived from the Carnivora. But there is to my mind a
fatal objection to this view. The seal of course has much in common with
the whale, inasmuch as it is a mammal adapted for an aquatic life, but
it has been converted to its general fish-like form by the peculiar
development of its hind-limbs into instruments of propulsion through the
water; for though the thighs and legs are small, the feet are large and
are the special organs of locomotion, the tail being quite rudimentary.
The two feet applied together form an organ very like the tail of a fish
or whale, and functionally representing it, but only functionally, for
the time has, I trust, quite gone by when the Cetacea were defined as
animals with the “hinder limbs united, forming a forked horizontal
tail.” In the whales, as we have seen, the hind-limbs are aborted and
the tail developed into a powerful swimming organ. Now it is very
difficult to suppose that when the hind-limbs had once become so well
adapted to a function so essential to the welfare of the animal as that
of swimming, they could ever have become reduced and their action
transferred to the tail;--the animal must have been in a too helpless
condition to maintain its existence during the transference, if it took
place, as we must believe, gradually. It is far more reasonable to
suppose that whales were derived from animals with large tails, which
were used in swimming, eventually with such effect that the hind-limbs
became no longer necessary, and so gradually disappeared. The powerful
tail, with lateral cutaneous flanges, of an American species of otter
(_Pteronura sandbachii_), or the still more familiar tail of the beaver,
may give some idea of this member in the primitive _Cetacea_. I think
that this consideration disposes of the principal argument in favour of
the whales being related to the seals, as most of the other
resemblances, such as those in the characters of their teeth, are
evidently resemblances of analogy related to similarity of habit.
As pointed out long ago by Hunter, there are numerous points in the
visceral organs of the Cetacea which far more resemble those of the
Ungulata than of the Carnivora. These are the complex stomach, the
simple liver, the respiratory organs, and especially the reproductive
organs and structures relating to the development of the young. Even the
skull of Zeuglodon, which has been cited as presenting a great
resemblance to that of a seal, has quite as much likeness to one of the
primitive pig-like Ungulates, except in the purely adaptive character of
the form of the teeth.
Though there is, perhaps, generally more error than truth in popular
ideas on natural history, I cannot help thinking that some insight has
been shown in the common names attached to one of the most familiar of
Cetaceans by those whose opportunities of knowing its nature have been
greatest--“Sea-Hog,” “Sea-Pig,” or “Herring-Hog” of our fishermen,
_Meerschwein_ of the Germans, corrupted into the French “Marsouin,” and
also “Porcpoisson,” shortened into “Porpoise.”
The difficulty that might be suggested in the derivation of the Cetacea
from the Ungulata, arising from the latter being at the present day
mainly vegetable feeders, is not great, as the primitive Ungulates were
probably omnivorous, as their least modified descendants, the pigs, are
still; and the aquatic branch might easily have gradually become more
and more piscivorous, as we know from the structure of their bones and
teeth, the purely terrestrial members have become by degrees more
exclusively graminivorous.
One other consideration may remove some of the difficulties that may
arise in contemplating the transition of land mammals into whales. The
gangetic dolphin (_Platanista_) and the somewhat related _Inia_ of South
America, which retain several rather generalised mammalian characters,
and are related to some of the earliest known European Miocene dolphins,
are both to the present day exclusively fluviatile, being found in the
rivers they inhabit almost up to their very sources, more than a
thousand miles from the sea. May this not point to the freshwater origin
of the whole group, and thus account for their otherwise inexplicable
absence from the Cretaceous seas?
We may conclude by picturing to ourselves some primitive generalised,
marsh-haunting animals with scanty covering of hair like the modern
hippopotamus, but with broad, swimming tails and short limbs, omnivorous
in their mode of feeding, probably combining water-plants with mussels,
worms, and freshwater crustaceans, gradually becoming more and more
adapted to fill the void place ready for them on the aquatic side of the
borderland on which they dwelt, and so by degrees being modified into
dolphin-like creatures inhabiting lakes and rivers, and ultimately
finding their way into the ocean. Here the disappearance of the huge
Enaliosaurians, the _Ichthyosauri_ and _Plesiosauri_, which formerly
played the part the Cetacea do now, had left them ample scope. Favoured
by various conditions of temperature and climate, wealth of food supply,
almost complete immunity from deadly enemies, and illimitable expanses
in which to roam, they have undergone the various modifications to which
the Cetacean type has now arrived, and gradually attained that colossal
magnitude which we have seen was not always an attribute of the animals
of this group.
Please to recollect, however, that this is a mere speculation, which may
or may not be confirmed by subsequent palæontological discovery. Such
speculations are, I trust, not without their use and interest,
especially when it is distinctly understood that they are offered only
as speculations and not as demonstrated facts.
ANTHROPOLOGY
XVI
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY[39]
It is impossible for us to commence the work of this section of the
Association without having vividly brought to our minds the loss which
has befallen us since our last meeting--the loss of one who was our most
characteristic representative of the complex science of
Anthropology--one who had for many years conducted with extraordinary
energy, amidst multifarious other avocations, a series of researches
into the history, customs, and physical characters of the early
inhabitants of our island, for which he was so especially fitted by his
archæological, historical, and literary as well as his anatomical
knowledge, and who was also the most popular and brilliant expositor, to
assemblies such as meet together on these occasions, of the results of
those researches. I need scarcely say that I refer to Professor
Rolleston.
Within the last few months the study of our subject in this country has
received an impulse from the publication of a book--small in size, it is
true, but full of materials for thought and instruction--the
_Anthropology_ of Mr. E. B. Tylor, the first work published in English
with that title, and one very different in its scope and method from the
older ethnological treatises.
The immense array of facts brought together in a small compass, the
terseness and elegance of the style, the good taste and feeling with
which difficult and often burning questions are treated, should give
this book a wide circulation among all classes, and thoroughly
familiarise both the word and the subject to English readers.
The origin and early history of man’s civilisation, his language, his
arts of life, his religion, science, and social customs in the primitive
conditions of society, are subjects in which, in consequence of their
direct continuity with the arts and sciences, religious, political, and
social customs among which we all live, by which we are all influenced,
and about which we all have opinions, every person of ordinary education
can and should take an interest. In fact, really to understand all these
problems in the complex condition in which they are presented to us now,
we ought to study them in their more simple forms, and trace them as far
as may be to their origins.
But, as the author remarks, this book is only an introduction to
anthropology, rather than a summary of all that it teaches; and some,
even those that many consider the most important branches of the
subject, are but lightly touched upon, or wholly passed over.
In one of the estimates of the character and opinions of the very
remarkable man and eminent statesman, whose death the country was
mourning last spring, it was stated: “Lord Beaconsfield had a
deep-rooted conviction of the vast importance of race, as determining
the relative dominance both of societies and of individuals;”[40] and
with regard to the question of what he meant by “race,” we have a key in
the last published work of the same acute observer of mankind: “Language
and religion do not make a race--there is only one thing which makes a
race, and that is blood.”[41] Now “blood” used in this sense is defined
as “kindred; relation by natural descent from a common ancestor;
consanguinity.”[42] The study of the true relationship of the different
races of men is then not only interesting from a scientific point of
view, but of great importance to statesmanship in such a country as
this, embracing subjects representing almost every known modification of
the human species whose varied and often conflicting interests have to
be regulated and provided for. It is to want of appreciation of its
importance that many of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the
government of our dependencies and colonies are due, especially the
great inconsistency between a favourite English theory and a too common
English practice--the former being that all men are morally and
intellectually alike, the latter being that all are equally inferior to
himself in all respects: both propositions egregiously fallacious. The
study of race is at a low ebb indeed when we hear the same contemptuous
epithet of “nigger” applied indiscriminately by the Englishmen abroad to
the blacks of the West Coast of Africa, the Kaffirs of Natal, the
Lascars of Bombay, the Hindoos of Calcutta, the aborigines of Australia,
and even the Maoris of New Zealand!
But how is he to know better? Where in this country is any instruction
to be had? Where are the books to which he may turn for trustworthy
information? The subject, as I have said, is but slightly touched upon
in the last published treatise on anthropology in our language. The
great work of Pritchard, a compendium of all that was known at the time
it was written, is now almost entirely out of date. In not a single
university or public institution throughout the three kingdoms is there
any kind of systematic teaching, either of physical or of any other
branch of anthropology, except so far as comparative philology may be
considered as bearing upon the subject. The one Society of which it is
the special business to promote the study of these questions, the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, is, I regret to
say, far from flourishing. An anthropological museum, in the proper
sense of the word, either public or private, does not exist in this
country.
What a contrast is this to what we see in almost every other nation in
Europe! At Paris there is, first, the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, where
man, as a zoological subject--almost entirely neglected in our British
Museum--has a magnificent gallery allotted to him, abounding not only in
illustrations of osteology, but also in models, casts, drawings, and
anatomical preparations, showing various points in his physical or
natural history, which are expounded to the public in the free lectures
of the venerable Professor Quatrefages and his able coadjutor, Dr. Hamy.
There is also the vigorous Society of Anthropology, which is stated in
the last annual report to number 720 members, showing an increase of 44
during the year 1880, and which is forming a museum on a most extensive
scale; and, finally, the School of Anthropology, founded by the
illustrious Broca, whose untimely death last year, instead of
paralysing, seems to have stimulated the energies of colleagues and
pupils into increased activity. In this school, supported partly by
private subscriptions, partly by the public liberality of the
Municipality of Paris, and of the Department of the Seine, are
laboratories in which all the processes of anthropological manipulation
are practised by students and taught to travellers. Here all the bodies
of persons of outlandish nationalities dying in any of the hospitals of
Paris are dissected by competent and zealous observers, who carefully
record every peculiarity of structure discovered, and are thus laying
the foundation for an exhaustive and trustworthy collection of materials
for the comparative anatomy of the races of man. Here, furthermore, are
lectureships on all the different branches. Biological and anatomical
anthropology, ethnology, prehistoric, linguistic, social, and medical
anthropology are all treated of separately by eminent professors who
have made these departments their special study. The influence of so
much activity is spreading beyond the capital. The foundation of an
Anthropological Society at Lyons has been announced within the present
year.