TWENTY-ONE PERSONS WITH TAILS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1954, 1 April 1885, Page 2

TWENTY-ONE PERSONS WITH TAILS.

» The discoveiy of the tailed man has been so often announced (says the London Standard) that until he is actually captured, photographed, lionised, and duly reported on, we. shall continue sceptical regarding the "well-authenti-cated statement" of this interesting personage running wild, and presumably naked, in the woods of New Britain. The fact that some extremely inaccessible spot has invariably been selected for his abode has enabled successive generations of romancers to remain uncontradicted, until they and their story were forgotten, Since the famous Lord Monboddo's time there have been plenty of assertions which would have been good enough proof for a theorist ready to catch at any straw, though scarcely weighty enough for ethnoligists. For example, a certain Colonel Du Corrett reported to the French Academy that when in Mecca, footy-three years ago, he saw at the house of the Emir a "Ghitane" slave named Bella, who had a tail three inches long, and as flexible as a monkey's. Unfortunately Colonel du Corret is not generally admitted to have ever been in Mecca, though the account which he gives has to an appreciable extent been» repeated, if not confirmed by other tellers of wonderous tales. John Strays,'a Dutch traveller who visited Formosa in 1677, asserted that he saw in the interior of that island a savage " with a tail more than a foot long, covered with red hair, and very like that of a cow," an appendage which, he added, was common to all the inhabitants, and was "the effects of the climate," Homemann transferred the story of the Niams-Niams, who were evidently the people to whom M. du Corret referred. Again and again have', travellers in Ethiopia alluded to' the belief in the tailed men which exist among the Abyssinians, Dr Wolffe was quite convinced of the truth of the story of there being men and women in Abyssinia with " tails like dogs and horses"—so, ponderous that they use them as weapons; and adds that such, people also live near China. Dr Hubsch. affirms that he saw, in 1852, in the Constantinople hospital, to which he was attached, a Nram-Niam wqman with a tail two inches lung, and a wolfish expression quite in keeping, Dr Hubsch was a man of good status, though at the time his reputation for strict adherence to the truth was not unquestioned by sceptics. In reality, it is now known that such deviations from the normal state of matters are by no means unique, Settjng aside the story of a child in Newcastle, which was bom with a tail one and onequajtef. inches long, Dr Max Beroels, a distinguished German anthropologist, has, within the last four years, Investigated twenty-one well-authenticated cases of persons being born with tails. There is, therefore, no reason for Bcouting the idea that men provided with the superfluity in question may exist, since it is an essential principle of modern biology that any peculiarity may become hereditary, and that there is a tendency to perpetuate this accidental"sport" for "the good of the species." In early life the "03 coccygis," or termination of th,o 'saorum' -whioh, jn the adult condition is tuoked in—projects somewhat, and Professor Ernst Haockel, who regards these bones as an undeveloped tail, declares that there exist rudimentary muscles the remains of those which, according to this somewhat wild evolutionist, served to move the tap of our "ancient progenitors." Unfortunately the subject has never, yet been reasonably treated from a popular point of view, the idea lending itself too '.much to burlesque or to ridicule for that calm discussion which so grave a possibility demands. It is, indeed—so Mr Baring-Gould tells us—a widespread superstition among Devonshire ohildren that Cornislvnien, are born with tails, and, according to a similar legend referred to by Andrew Marvel in his "Loyal Scot," certain men of Kent were afflicted in like fashion as a mark of the Divine displeasure at their treatment of Thomas a'Becket's horse at Stroud, neap Rochester. But.after ajl, what matters it? A tail |s by no, means an unornamental superfluity, A tailless monkey is less pleasant to the eye than one with a tail, and among various savage tribes this fact is recognised by the men attaching those of wild animals to their dress when performing any particularly sacred dances. Indeed, the train of a fashionable lady, of a great officer .of State like the Lord Chancellor, and of a debutante at Court, may bo referred to a similar inarticulate longing after what nature has omitted to supply.