are similar cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are others.  And if boys may have this additional ornament to their vertebral columns, why not men?  And if men, why not giants?  So I may not have made a very bad blunder, after all, and my reader has learned something about the homo caudatus as spoken of by Linnxus, and as shown me in photograph by Dr. Priestley.  This child is a candidate for the vacant place of Missing Link.

In accounting for the blunders, and even gross blunders, which, sooner or later, one who writes much is pretty sure to commit, I must not forget the part played by the blind spot or idiotic area in the brain, which I have already described.

The most knowing persons we meet with are sometimes at fault.  Nova onania possumus omnes is not a new nor profound axiom, but it is well to remember it as a counterpoise to that other truly American saying of the late Mr. Samuel Patch, “Some things can be done as well as others.”  Yes, some things, but not all things.  We all know men and women who hate to admit their ignorance of anything.  Like Talkative in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” they are ready to converse of “things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home; things more essential or things circumstantial.”

Talkative is apt to be a shallow fellow, and to say foolish things about matters he only half understands, and yet he has his place in society.  The specialists would grow to be intolerable, were they not counterpoised to some degree by the people of general intelligence.  The man who knows too much about one particular subject is liable to become a terrible social infliction.  Some of the worst bores (to use plain language) we ever meet with are recognized as experts of high grade in their respective departments.  Beware of making so much as a pinhole in the dam that holds back their knowledge.  They ride their hobbies without bit or bridle.  A poet on Pegasus, reciting his own verses, is hardly more to be dreaded than a mounted specialist.

One of the best offices which women perform for men is that of tasting books for them.  They may or may not be profound students,—­some of them are; but we do not expect to meet women like Mrs. Somerville, or Caroline Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every dinner-table or afternoon tea.  But give your elect lady a pile of books to look over for you, and she will tell you what they have for her and for you in less time than you would have wasted in stupefying yourself over a single volume.

One of the encouraging signs of the times is the condensed and abbreviated form in which knowledge is presented to the general reader.  The short biographies of historic personages, of which within the past few years many have been published, have been a great relief to the large class of readers who want to know something, but not too much, about them.