Lowly Origins Research Articles

Monsieur Göthé: Goethes unbekannter Großvater by Heiner Boehncke, Hans Sarkowicz, and Joachim Seng

Reviewed by: Monsieur Göthé: Goethes unbekannter Großvater by Heiner Boehncke, Hans Sarkowicz, and Joachim Seng Elizabeth Powers Heiner Boehncke, Hans Sarkowicz, and Joachim Seng. Monsieur Göthé: Goethes unbekannter Großvater. Berlin: Die Andere Bibliothek, 2017. 478 pp. Monsieur Göthé makes evident the aptness of the phrase "born with a silver spoon in his mouth" in the case of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In view of the interest in recent years in the poet's financial affairs and his knowledge of economic matters, it is not surprising that the authors would wish to throw light on the source of Goethe's wealth and on his own acknowledgment to Eckermann of the great sums of money that had been spent, "um das zu lernen, was ich weiß." The inheritance of Johann Caspar, Goethe's father, in 1730 from his father, Friedrich Georg, victualer at the "Weidenhof" on the Zeil in Frankfurt, is concretely enumerated (sacks and sacks full of louis d'ors, ducats, "Vikariatstaler," and other gold coins, but also approximately 12,000 liters of wine). Goethe came into the world with an immense "Weinvorrat, . . . der gepflegt, umgefüllt, mit Kennerschaft und in ziemlich großen Mengen getrunken wurde," especially of the premier Mosel wines of the years 1706, 1719, and 1726, which his mother affectionately referred to as "die alten Herren" (31). The title of this text alludes to the four years Friedrich Georg (b. 1657) spent as a tailor apprentice in the "silk city" of Lyon, France, from 1681 to 1685, when the accent was apparently added to prevent shortening of the family name. (A second alteration occurred when Johann Caspar matriculated at the Casimirianum in Coburg in 1725; the Latin document did not recognize an umlaut.) Lyon was part of the twelve-year "Wanderschaft" of the Thuringia-born apprentice tailor, who left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and moved to Frankfurt, married a tailor's daughter, and became a sought-after dressmaker ("eine Art Karl Lagerfeld von Frankfurt. . . . Unter den Damenschneidern der Stadt war er einer der ersten," 264). Between 1686 and 1704 this self-made man (259) went from the lowest tax category to the highest. In 1705, as a widower, he married [End Page 306] the widow of the proprietor of the Weidenhof and ran that business until his death in 1730. One indication of his wealth can be seen in the 2,700 guilders that Johann Caspar earned in interest income in 1770, the year he married Catharina Elisabeth Textor. In contrast, his new father-in-law, Johann Wolfgang Textor, the highest city official, earned 1,700 guilders a year. Friedrich Georg and the Thuringian Göthes are not exactly unknown. Biographical research in the late nineteenth century produced several studies of the family tree. The earliest documented Göthe was Hans, born about 1500 in Sonderhausen, who, it is reckoned (from a variety of contemporary sources), was a stone carver. It is with his grandson Hans Christian Göthe the Younger (b. 1604), a blacksmith, that a genealogical record begins to emerge. Unfortunately, the documentary record for Friedrich Georg is scant. The archives in Artern, where he lived from the age of two, were destroyed in a great fire in 1683. There is no record of his apprenticeship in Germany, only a later account of his having spent eight years of it in Saxon lands and in the Reich. There is not a single scrap of paper of his residence in Lyon; like most Protestants working in France, he kept his head down: "Er blieb unsichtbar, hinterliess keine Spuren" (145). The first documented piece of his existence in Frankfurt was his citizenship petition (signed as "Fredericus Georg Göthé") in 1687. The authors have been assiduous in their "Spurensuche." For those like myself who love reading the results of archival research, Monsieur Göthé has many delights, and the introduction, discussing the surviving original sources, presents a good picture of what archivists do. In the end, however, this study is perforce about the changing world in which an ambitious individual could rise from lowly origins to wealth and reputation. Alongside surveying late seventeenth-century apprenticeship customs and...

Intelligence or Counter Intelligence? Cognitive and Behavioral Implications of Mediated Cyborg Images on Children

“Human mind contained the ‘indelible stamp of his lowly origin’ Human could differ from animals only by their ability to control these passions to suppress the beast within”- Charles Darwin, The Decent of man, 1871. Neurological system plays a significant role in establishing the human as intelligent beings on the earth, distinguishing it from its predecessor. With its well built communication network and mechanism and, nervous system prepare the body and mind to react to any occasion through reciprocate actions. There is a well-built communication network system internally that facilitates communication among the innumerable cells so that the internal body organs function properly. What if when artificial intelligence in the name of cyberog is here to think, deliberate and act on our behalf and where are we heading to? How is it going to affect our abilities like thinking, reasoning, and being analytical? What happens to the socially constructed systems and agencies like families, schools, organizations and institutions that groom and shape individuals from birth to death? What might happen to the cultural diversity of this universe rooted deeply in language, gender, race, ethnicity, place of origin, physical and biological features and capabilities at large are vague, wild questions posed in dark. Cyber technologies are to stay with us. Their omnipotent and ubiquitous presence reached a stage that the humanity started cohabitating with them. They are part of daily life, as human are employing them at every level. Children as young as two or three are absorbed in operating smart phones, spell bounded by the colorful moving images, sounds, music and mobile games. Computer-mediated education has long ago replaced the face to face interaction, limiting the teacher to a facilitating role, as if human are lacking physically, emotionally and intellectually (Voithofer, R.J.,). Meticulous updating of technology is constantly forcing the man to adapt to it, involving huge politics of economy. Socially, you are not fit without having adapted to the latest technology. The present study would like to deconstruct the politics of economy and polity, while unearthing the sociocultural, physiological and psychological impact of Cyborg technologies among children using the secondary data. By reviewing the existing literature in this aspect the study would like to assess the cognitive and behavioral implications of mediated cyborg on children.

Gendered Language and the Science of Colonial Silk

Gendered Language and the Science of Colonial Silk Allison Margaret Bigelow (bio) In May 1652, Virginia Ferrar conducted an experiment in her family garden at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, to determine the optimal growing conditions for silkworms. Her father carefully chronicled her methods and results in a letter that he sent to Samuel Hartlib, a Polish émigré and educational reformer who published the letter as the Rare and New Discovery of a Speedy Way, … Found Out by a Young Lady in England, … for the feeding of Silk-worms … on the Mulberry-Tree Leaves in Virginia. The religioscientific paradox of a cultivated commodity whose lowly origins could assume such heights of value—these were emblematic insects whose foul excretions were spun into sensuous silks—appealed to mid-seventeenth-century reformers who sought to refashion the nature of English empire at the height of Oliver Cromwell’s western design. For these writers, some of whom supported the Stuart monarchy, some of whom were aligned with the Protectorate, and most of whom were members of Hartlib’s loosely organized network of correspondents, silk represented the type of material good and spiritual symbol that both sides thought suitable in the reformation of English colonialism. As they envisioned a new English enterprise, colonial industry, and science of sericulture, “projectors” sought ways to integrate raw goods and uncultivated peoples into a universal mercantile and spiritual economy.1 This new program of silk work, Hartlib explained in the prefatory address to his “Ingenious Reader” in Legacy of Husbandry, would depend less on royal decrees that ordered large-scale landholders to purchase seeds from the Crown and plant mulberry trees on their estates (59–63) and more on empirically tested, commercially viable, gender-inclusive models like “the Experiment of a virtuous Lady of this Nation for the breeding of Silk-worms” (Hartlib, Rare and New Discovery A2). These interlocking programs of religious reformation, new knowledge, and gendered labor were borne out in the second edition of Virginia Ferrar’s silkworm trials, a [End Page 271] series of letters from John Ferrar and correspondents in Ireland, England, Virginia, and Germany that Hartlib published in 1655 under the new title of The Reformed Virginian Silkworm; or, A Rare and New Discovery of a Speedy Way, … Found Out by a Young Lady in England.…2 As Hartlib’s preface and editorial practices suggest, literacy, literary genres, and lettered transmissions of natural knowledge were central to the reformation of imperial silk and colonial Virginia. On the ground, silk works were utter failures. But as they were imagined, debated, and projected throughout the ends of English empire, silkworm letters by women and men reveal new insights into the fashioning of colonial designs, and the ways in which English projectors incorporated Near and Far Eastern methods and indigenous American sericultural practices into the new knowledge that they circulated through poetry and prose. While James I/VI’s instructions of 1607 had gone “wholly out of print,” multiple accounts of the “Lady’s” method, “which seemeth to be brought unto a more perfect and speedy accomplishment than heretofore hath been known either here or in France,” circulated among Anglophone readership communities in England, Ireland, Virginia, and Continental Europe (Hartlib, Rare and New Discovery A2).3 Unlike the “Muck-worms” who “conceal” their work “for private ends,” Virginia Ferrar shared her silkworm techniques for public improvement in England, and the global community of saints more broadly. While the former was ruptured by civil war (1642–46, 1648–60), the latter had been torn into factions of Christians. Virginia Ferrar’s natural knowledge was thus rooted in England and envisioned as part of a universal project to reform English empire and restore Adamic empire. Protestant projectors like Hartlib imagined that the better husbanding of commodities like silk would allow England and its foreign plantations to “overcome the burthen of povertie which for want of employment and decay of Trade, doth lie so heavie upon very many” (Rare and New Discovery A2). Introducing new trades was a responsibility of the blessed to the needy, allowing landless colonists and cash-poor indigenous people a chance to make use of “all the gifts of God” and to experience the spiritual and...

Do comprehensive schools reduce social mobility?1

This paper investigates the claim that the shift from a selective to a comprehensive school system had a deleterious effect on social mobility in Great Britain. Using data from the National Child Development Study, we compare the chances, for both class and income mobility, of those who attended different kinds of school. Where media attention focuses exclusively on the chances for upward mobility of those children from lowly origins who were (or would have been) judged worthy of selection into a grammar school, we offer more rounded analyses. We match respondents in a way that helps us to distinguish those inequalities in mobility chances that are due to differences between children from those due to differences between the schools they attended; we look at the effects of the school system on the mobility chances of all children, not merely those from less advantaged origins; and we compare comprehensive- and selective-system schools, not merely comprehensive and grammar schools. After matching, we find, first, that going to a grammar school rather than a comprehensive does not make low-origin children more likely to be upwardly mobile but it helps them move further if they are; second, that grammar schools do not benefit working-class children, in terms of class mobility, more than they benefit service-class children, but, in terms of income mobility, such schools benefit low-income children somewhat more than they benefit higher-income children - that benefit relating only to rather modest and limited movements within the income distribution. Finally, however, the selective system as a whole yields no mobility advantage of any kind to children from any particular origins: any assistance to low-origin children provided by grammar schools is cancelled out by the hindrance suffered by those who attended secondary moderns. Overall, our findings suggest that comprehensive schools were as good for mobility as the selective schools they replaced.

Are humans still evolving?

Much of the beauty of the concept of evolution lies in its elegant simplicity. According to Charles Darwin's grand theory, the characteristics of populations or species can change over time if heritable variation exists, and if there are differences in reproductive success or survival rates. Therefore, in response to environmental pressures, the frequency of heritable characteristics will change from one generation to the next, and evolution by natural selection will take place. > …humans display greater genetic unity than most other species, which has led many to assume that human evolution ended with the origin of modern humans The modern theory of evolution—built on a vast array of supporting evidence from diverse scientific fields—is now widely accepted. However, it has been far more controversial in a social context, particularly when it is applied to our own species. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he was aware that applying the concept of natural selection to humans would create controversy in a religious Europe, and therefore only briefly mentioned that, “[i]n the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches […] light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (Darwin, 1859). He waited another 12 years to revisit the issue of human evolution in The Descent of Man (Darwin, 1871), in which he noted that humans have both a unique place in nature and are part of the natural world, such that man, with a “god‐like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system […] still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin” (Darwin, 1871). The theory of evolution has since been applied to the understanding of human variation in several ways. The most infamous uses of evolutionary theory, which were …

The Invention of the Model: Artists and Models in Paris, 1830 1870

In 1856, the energetic Léon de Laborde (diplomat, traveller, conservator and writer), suggested a nineteenth-century version of outsourcing as one solution to France's artistic ills. In Laborde's opinion, French painters and sculptors were making do with a sorry selection of artists' models. Socially and even ethnically inferior (Jewish models were supposedly abundant), the lowly origins of these service workers in Parisian studios infected their every painted or chiselled representation. A work of art was supposed to transport the viewer, not leave her with the uncomfortable realization that many a former labourer or prostitute had been immortalized on canvas or in marble. An eagerness to strike ‘affected poses’ made this awareness more grating. The strength of Laborde's allergy to mugging bears out the relevance of Michael Fried's work to Waller's concern for ‘the praxis of the pose’. In addition, Paul Duro, drawing on Marc Gotlieb's study of Ernest Meissonier, has recently underlined the extraordinary measures taken by the latter at mid-century in staging the model via a set of re-imagined Naturalist practices. Laborde's exasperation thus reflected widespread contemporary concerns about the status of the model. Laborde however, was moved to wonder if the representatives of ‘beautiful races’ — Italy received reverential mention, although his menu was global — could don the attire of Achilles or Venus with greater verisimilitude.

Review: Lowly Origin, by Jonathan Kingdon

Review: <i>Lowly Origin</i>, by Jonathan Kingdon

Lowly origin: where, when, and why our ancestors first stood up

Our ability to walk on two legs is not only a characteristic human trait but one of the things that made us human in the first place. Once our ancestors could walk on two legs, they began to do many of the things that apes cannot do: cross wide open spaces, manipulate complex tools, communicate with new signal systems, and light fires. Titled after the last two words of Darwin's Descent of Man and written by a leading scholar of human evolution, Lowly Origin is the first book to explain the sources and consequences of bipedalism to a broad audience. Along the way, it accounts for recent fossil discoveries that show us a still incomplete but much bushier family tree than most of us learned about in school. Jonathan Kingdon uses the very latest findings from ecology, biogeography, and paleontology to build a new and up-to-date account of how four-legged apes became two-legged hominins. He describes what it took to get up onto two legs as well as the protracted consequences of that step--some of which led straight to modern humans and others to very different bipeds. This allows him to make sense of recently unearthed evidence suggesting that no fewer than twenty species of humans and hominins have lived and become extinct. Following the evolution of two-legged creatures from our earliest lowly forebears to the present, Kingdon concludes with future options for the last surviving biped. A major new narrative of human evolution, Lowly Origin is the best available account of what it meant--and what it means--to walk on two feet.

Message and medium: Lowly and action-related origins

Hurford presents a much-needed lowly origins scenario for the evolution of conceptual precursors to lexical items. But more is still needed on action, regarding both the message level of lexical concepts and the medium. We summarize our complementary action-based lowly origins (frame/content) scenario for the vocal auditory medium of language, which, like Hurford's scenario, is anchored in a phylogenetically old neurological dichotomy.

In the Shadow of the State: The Politics of Denunciation and Panegyric during the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1940-1958

In the Shadow of the State: The Politics of Denunciation and Panegyric during the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1940-1958

XX Thomas Overton v. Sir John Fastolf

It is not surprising that the longest suit on record involving Englishmen in France in these years should have had as its protagonist Sir John Fastolf who, in this suit, was at the centre of a lengthy legal process against one of his chief servants, Thomas Overton.Stripped of its inessentials, the suit was concerned with the charge that Overton had been cheating Fastolf of moneys due to him and, above all, that he had constantly refused to produce the accounts by which, it was implied, the charge might have been disproved. At the root of the trouble were the characters of the two opponents, each intent upon outdoing the other, neither, as a consequence, being shown up in a good light. If Overton, who said he was a well-born clerk educated at Winchester (and it was as an unmarried clerk that the bishop of Paris sought him for his own jurisdiction) was, in fact, a rogue and a deceiver, Fastolf appears as high-handed in his dealings with his servant. It was as denigrators of character that both men excelled, Fastolf depicting his servant as a man of mean birth, bigamous, a player of dice whom he had helped to promote from his lowly origins, while Overton was alleged to have stated that his master was a ‘chevalier fuitif’, a reference to Fastolf's flight from the field at Patay. The suit is also notable for Overton's full-scale attack on the ‘establishment’, and for the accusations brought against him of having denounced the ‘chappeles fourréz’ (or members of the Parlement), and of being the author of seditious pamphlets. The duke of Bedford had supported Fastolf before, in his suit against Denis Sauvage; now Overton's ridicule of the administration both in England and France, where Overton was accused of distributing his pamphlets, forced the regent to join suit again with his ‘grand maître d'holel’.

The evolutionary advantages of being stupid.

It is generally accepted that the highly developed brain of man with its associated high degree of intelligence represents a decisive difference between man and other animals. It is frequently suggested that a high intelligence from the evolutionary standpoint can be equated with superiority. This type of thinking has resulted in an anthropocentric view in which man because of his intelligence is re- garded as the pinnacle of evolution. This opinion was expressed by Darwin in the conclusion section of The Descent of Man as follows: Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here con- cerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intel- lect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar sys-, tern—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the in- delible stamp of his lowly origin. (1)

Ned Kelly: The Flight of the Legend

There were some who were saying Ned was dead. But now a Ned Kelly renaissance is in full flower. The experts are writing about him again in the journals, the sketch men are reviving his helmeted figure in the newspapers, the film men are planning to put him through the celluloid once more and we can buy the Stringybark Shooting of Sergeant Kennedy for $1.50 post free. In this revival his lowly origins have been forgotten, at least in Sydney, where he has even won his way into the very society he plagued so much when he was alive, for Ned's bold image was the decorative motif for this year's Town and Country Ball. The academics, too, have taken up his cause. At the Retrial of Ned Kelly held at Easter in his own country of Wangaratta, professors of History and Law met in public conference to consider the question 'Was Justice Done?' Undoubtedly they gave the famous outlaw a better hearing than he received in his own day but for many the question must have had a rather academic ring. After all, does a living folk hero depend on justice? Why now this return to the sources, since the legend itself has never been dependent on them? Kelly men might well feel uneasy as they watch Ned emerging from the legendary half-light into the brighter light of modern publicity, and the clear dry light of scholarship. Perhaps it is not his place in law, but in legend, that is the question. We might try, then, to follow the flight of the legend.

The Firmament of Time by Loren Eiseley (review)

ganism. A tri-dimensional matrix ofthis sort built around the unique apposition offibers at each vacuole locus serves the author as his neural memory substrate. Furthermore: "such a memory organ . . . does not only register the signals; it integrates them as well." In the author's schema thepowerfulattributes ofthis vacuolar systemrestin the uniqueness ofthe fiber aggregation at each ofthese vacuolar nodal points. A spatio-temporal activity sequence in some or all ofthe group will permanently change the bioelectric characteristics ofa particular vacuole. Thus conditioned, future activity in but a fraction ofdie conductive elements originally involved may serve to set offthe entire spatio-temporal sequence. Professor Bok feels that such a model successfully fulfills the requirements of "associative memory," "learning," and "conditioning": "In the vacuole hypothesis the interfibralsynapsesarecalled conditionedsynapsesbecausetheirconductivity, aswasdescribed, depends on conditions prevalent in the past. They seem to be responsible for the conditioned reflexes described by Pavlov." Ifthese vacuole complexes are indeed the repositors ofmemory "bits," they must exist in sufficient numbers to provide fresh memory loci throughout life, since presumably new vacuoles cannot be generated following early development. Reasoning from the maximum number ofnerve impulses which can be produced in a lifetime by the usual complement of sense organs, io10 bits are estimated as entering the cortex. The total number ofcortical neurons (3.3 X io10) are believed inadequate numerically as a reservoir ofmemory loci, whereas an estimated 5 X 10" vacuoles should prove more than sufficient ; "and unlike the neuron cycles, all these vacuoles can be used for storage, as none of them is involved in the daily neuronal function ofthe cortex, and as each vacuole itself is a complete unit in the storage system." The author is careful to point out the hypothetical nature ofthese assumptions. They are advanced as educated guesses growing out ofa quantitative approach to histological data—as straw men for the physiologist and chemist to demolish ifthey can. It is possible to raise questions about his data-gathering methods and to take issue with his conclusions. It is more difficult to deny the power ofdie quantitative approach and the necessity ofits application to biological science. In this regard, even ifin no odier, Professor Bok's monograph contributes importantly to the literature. And though one may accept or reject some ofthe more audacious conclusions as one will, the detailed analysis ofquantitative cortical relations should provide a mine ofdata for cortical histologists— and histonomists—for years to come. Madge E. Schetbel Arnold B. Scheibel University ofCalifornia Medical Center Los Angeles 24, California The Firmament of Time. By Loren Eiseley. New York: Atheneum, i960. Pp. vii+181. $3.50. Loren Eiseley, scientist, is also a poet with a philosophical leaning which is evident in his writings. The result is that his books, lectures, and other efforts command attention 488 Book Reviews Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Summer if61 because they give the reader or his audience a rewarding experience as he enjoys peering with the audior into die less known approach to our existence. This is especially true of his most recent book. Those ofus who enjoyed The ImmenseJourney (1957) recall thathe portrayed in somber tones man's long climb from lowly origins to his present plight in the cosmos. In The Firmament of Time the author strives to show the naturalness ofthe universe through the progression ofscientific studies. He centers his thesis on man. The book comprises six lectures given before the Department of Physiology of the College of Medicine of the University of Cincinnati under a grant from the John and Mary Markle Foundation ofNew York in 1959. These unique homilies consider the naturalness ofthe world, deadi, life, man, the humanness ofman, and "natural" itself. In the first lecture it is made clear that man is at heart bodi pragmatist and mystic. The history ofhis dualism is fascinatingly dealt with. It is suggested diat man will always carry with him this dual approach to nature. After his analysis ofman versus die machine, the author says, "Man, too, was to become as natural as the wandering stars that lighted his unknown course. He was to learn diat his habitation was unfixed. Not only he, but his tightly governed universe, was soon to be adrift and...

Effects of Student Self-Help

T HERE have been, traditionally, two contrasting approaches to the question of what effect self-help employment has upon college students. On the one hand, many observers have sentimentalized the role of student employment in developing character, transforming weaklings into he men, adding the most important elements to education of college youth, and in short creating selfmade men and women. In many circles, great prestige is attached to having worked one's way through college, as part of the American tradition of admiration for rugged self-reliance; persons in high places point with pride to such evidence of lowly origin. This point of view sees only virtues in student employment, and attributes only favorable effects to such activity. On the other hand, some alarmists have placed sweeping condemnation on all employment by students while attending school, alleging that it interferes with the main business for which students come to college, that it has definitely adverse effects upon scholastic achievement, health, and all aspects of student life. Only in recent years has attention been directed to attempts at careful study of the effects, and the findings may be disappointing to those holding either of these contrasting views. Preliminary to the question of effects is the question of the extent of employment among college students. A recent survey of the various available studies on extent of student employment, made by one of the present writers, may be summarized by stating that from one-third to one-half of the students, on the average, engage in part-time employment while attending college, with great variations according to sex (more workers among men than women), type of college, location, and other factors. As would be expected, some schools are far above this rough average-a few co-operative-type schools having ioo per cent of their students gainfully employed-and some schools are far below this average. Studies in various years show a surprising constancy, with less change in the proportion employed from year to year than is frequently supposed (i9). The same survey of various studies revealed the not unexpected finding that working students are drawn more heavily from homes with lower incomes and less wealth. Between I to 20 per cent of the students were

An Ectromelus: An Atavistic Relapse

Darwin, after a most comprehensive and searching investigation of the phenomena of life and variation, came to the conclusion that “man is the co-descendant with the other mammals of a common progenitor,” and still “bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” With the immense and varied ancestry man has had, and the infinitude of his connections with the rest of the animal world, “atavism,” i.e., inheritance of characteristics from remote, not from the more immediate ancestors, is a very interesting subject of study. The presence of supernumerary nipples in man may be cited as an example of atavism. This abnormality has been noticed by me in four patients during five years' observations in the hospitals in this country. In some parts of Central and Eastern Europe a very high percentage of men is said to possess this abnormality. This characteristic is absent in apes, baboons, and monkeys, who are men's immediate successors, but is found in lemurs, an order of mammals lower in order. The rare occurrence of multiple births in women is a characteristic which is reversion, or atavistic towards the condition normal in lower vertebrates.