to the same diseases
and tormented by the same parasites as the apes. He further dwells on
the general agreement exhibited by young embryonic forms, and he
illustrates this by two figures placed one above the other, one
representing a human embryo, after Ecker, the other a dog embryo,
after Bischoff.[89]

Darwin finds further proofs of the animal origin of man in the reduced
structures, in themselves extremely variable, which are either
absolutely useless to their possessors, or of so little use that they
could never have developed under existing conditions. Of such vestiges
he enumerates: the defective development of the _panniculus carnosus_
(muscle of the skin) so widely distributed among mammals, the
ear-muscles, the occasional persistence of the animal ear-point in
man, the rudimentary nictitating membrane (_plica semilunaris_) in the
human eye, the slight development of the organ of smell, the general
hairiness of the human body, the frequently defective development or
entire absence of the third molar (the wisdom tooth), the vermiform
appendix, the occasional reappearance of a bony canal (_foramen
supracondyloideum_) at the lower end of the humerus, the rudimentary
tail of man (the so-called taillessness), and so on. Of these
rudimentary structures the occasional occurrence of the animal
ear-point in man is most fully discussed. Darwin's attention was
called to this interesting structure by the sculptor Woolner. He
figures such a case observed in man, and also the head of an alleged
orang-foetus, the photograph of which he received from Nitsche.

Darwin's interpretation of Woolner's case as having arisen through a
folding over of the free edge of a pointed ear has been fully borne
out by my investigations on the external ear.[90] In particular, it
was established by these investigations that the human foetus, about
the middle of its embryonic life, possesses a pointed ear somewhat
similar to that of the monkey genus Macacus. One of Darwin's
statements in regard to the head of the orang-foetus must be
corrected. A _large_ ear with a point is shown in the photograph,[91]
but it can easily be demonstrated--and Deniker has already pointed
this out--that the figure is not that of an orang foetus at all, for
that form has much smaller ears with no point; nor can it be a
gibbon-foetus, as Deniker supposes, for the gibbon ear is also without
a point. I myself regard it as that of a Macacus-embryo. But this
mistake, w