St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-02-26
PEOPLE WITH TAILS.
A Deformity Not as Unusual as Many
suppose.
From the London, Standard

oHppOSF.
From the London Standard.
The discovery of the tailed man has been
so often announced that until he is actually
captured, photographed, lionized and duly
reported on we shall continue skeptcal re =
garding the ''well authenticated statement''
of this interesting parsonage 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 genera
TONS of romancers to remain uncontradcted
until they and their story was 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
hardly weighty enough for cthnologists
For example. certain Col. Du Correct re-
ported to the French academy that when in
Mecca, forty-three years ago, he saw at the
house of the Emira "Ghilane" slave named
Bellal, who had tail three inches long, and
as flexible as a monkeys. Unfortunately
Col. Du Correct 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 wondrous tales.
John Struys Dutch traveller, who visited
Formosa in 1877, asserted that he saw in the
interior of that island savage ''with a tail
more than a foot long, covered with red hair,
and very like that of cow" an appendage
which, he adds, was common to all the in
habtants, and twas the effect of the eli
mate" Hornsm transferred the story to
the Maintains, who were evidently the
people to whom sM Du Correct referred.
Again and again have travellers in Ethiopia
alluded to the belief in the tailed men which
exists among the Abyssiniaus. DR.. Wolff was
quite convinced OF the truth of the story of
there being men and women in Abyssinia
with tails like dogs and horses"-so pom
derous 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
physician, Niam-Niam woman, with a tail
two inches long and woltish expression
quite in keeping. Dr. Hubsch was a man of
good stature, though at the time his reputa-
ton for strict adherence to the truth was not
unquesGioned by skeptics. In reality, it is
now known that such deviations from the
normal state of matters are by no means
unique.
Setting aside the story of child in New
castle, which was born with tail one and
one-fourth inches long. Mr. Max Mertels
distinguished German anthropologist, has,
within the last four years, investigated
twenty-one well authenticated cases of per-
sons having been born with tails. There is,
therefore, no reason for scouting the idea
that men provided with the superiority may
exist, since it is an essential principle of
ioiO hot no
come hereditary, and that there is tendency
to perpetuate these accidental ''sports" for
1.-THE good of the species.n In early life the
oscoccygis, or termination of the sacrum-
which in the adult condition is tucked in
projects somewhat. and Prof. Ernst Hasckl
who regards the bones as an undeveloped
tail, declares that there exist rudimentary
muscles, the remains of those which, accord
ing to the somewhat wild evolutionist,
served to make the tail of our ''ancient pro-
genitors." 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. 1t is ndeed-So Mr.. Barring Gould
tells us-a widespread superstition among
Devonshire children that Cornishmen 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 dis
pleasure of their treatment of Tn tomas a
Bccket's horse, at Strood, near Rochester.
But after ALL what matters its A tail is by
no means an ornamental superfluity. A
tailless monkey is infinitely less pleasant to
the eve than one with tail, and among va
rious savage tribes this fact is recognized by
the men attaching those Of wild animals to
their dress when performing any particularly
sacred dances. Indeed, the train of fash
ionable lady, of great officer of state like
the lord chancellor, and q debutante at
court may be referred to similar inarticu-
late longing after what nature has omitted to
supply.