The elements of physiology / by J. Fred Blumenbach.

  • Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The elements of physiology / by J. Fred Blumenbach. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    risen of these differences depends the analogical argument first employed by Blumenbach. Finding the ferret (mustelafuro) to differ from the pole-cat (m. putorius) by the redness of its eyes, he concludes it is merely a variety of the same species, because instances of this deviation are known to occur accidentally in other animals; but he concludes the African elephant is of a species distinct from the Asiatic, because the invariable difference of their molar teeth is of a description which naturalists have never found accidental. Now there exist among mankind no differences greater than what happen occasionally in separate species of brutes. The colours of the animals around us, horses, cows, dogs, cats, rabbits, fowls, are extremely various, — black, white, brown, grey, variegated. The hair of the wild Siberian sheep is close in summer, but rough and curled in winter ;] sheep in Thibet are covered with the finest wool, in Ethiopia with coarse stiff hair;m the bristles of the hog in Normandy are too soft for the manufacture of brushes;n goats, rabbits, and cats of Angouri, in Anatolia, have very long hair, white as snow and soft as silk.0 The head of the domestic pig differs as much from that of the wild animal, as the Negro from the European in this respect ;P so the head of the Neapolitan horse, denominated ram's head on ac- count of its shape, from that of the Hungarian animal, remarkable for its shortness and the extent of its lower jaw;<i the cranium of fowls at Padua is dilated like a shell, and perforated by an im- mense number of small holes ;r cattle and sheep in some parts of our own country have horns, in others not; in Sicily sheep have enormous horns ;s and in some instances this animal has so many, as to have acquired the epithet polyceratous. The form of other parts is no less various. In Normandy, pigs have hind-legs much longer than the fore,1 at the Cape of Good Hope, cows have much shorter legs than in England ;u the differ- ence between the Arabian, Syrian, and German, horses is suffi- 1 Pallas, Spicileg. Zoologica. m Blumenbach, 1. c. § 28. M. c. ° 1. c. p 1. c. q 1. c. r Pallas, Spic Zool. fasc. iv. p. 22. Sandifort, Museum Anatomicum Acad. Lugd. Batav. t. i. p. 306. s Blumenbach, 1. c. § 30. l 1. C. u 1. c.