4 EEVIEW8. 



uses as those for which we employ hands ; the Carajas who contrive 

 to steal and hide away even fish-hooks, with theii' feet, from their 

 unsuspecting visitors; and he might have added, the treacherous 

 Australian savages, who commonly pretend to approach unarmed, 

 hut aU the while drag their spears through the grass vdth their 

 toes. 



Leaving aside the famous Miss BiiEn, and the painter Ducornet, 

 who may, or might, be seen in Paris, executuig historical pictures on 

 the great scale with his feet, there is ample evidence, that, of the 

 elements of the definition of a hand given by M. St. Hilaire, only the 

 elongation and deep division of the digits can be retained, even for Man. 

 In Man in fact, while the longest interdigital cleft of the hand is rather 

 less than half as long as the whole hand, the longest interdigital cleft of 

 the foot is, as we have said, but little more than a fifth as long as the 

 whole foot. Here, therefore, the distinction is clear. But in the Mar- 

 moset {Hapale) the longest interdigital cleft between the toes of the 

 terminal division of the hind member is not more than 2-7ths as long 

 as the whole division. So that if the whole length of the terminal 

 division of a limb be taken as 35, the length of the longest interdigital 

 space of the human hand may be taken as about 16, that of the 

 human foot as aboiit 7, and that of the hind limb of Kapale as 10. 

 So that, judged even by this test, the latter is much more of a foot 

 than a hand. 



M. St. Hilaire's definition then seems as complete a failure as all 

 ■the other attempts which have been made to justify the application 

 of the title " fom--handed" to the apes — a failure which becomes still 

 more conspicuous, if, leaving the external features of the hand and 

 foot, we turn to their anatomical structure; by which it may be 

 readily demonstrated, that the arrangement of the bones and muscles 

 of the terminal segment of the hind limb of every ape whatsoever is, 

 in aU essential respects, similar to that which obtains in the foot of 

 man and other mammals, and is totally different from that found in 

 the hand of man and in the terminal segment of the fore _limb_ of 

 other mammals.* In fact, there is no four-handed mammal in exist- 

 ence : no mammal, that is, the terminal segments of whose hind 

 limbs are not far more like the foot of man than they are like his 

 hand. The terminal segments of the fore and hind limbs of mammals 

 have their several and distinct plans of construction, and in no case 

 does a hind terminal segment take on the plan of a fore segment or 

 the reverse. Either may become prehensile, but a prehensile foot, 

 such as the apes and opossums possess, is a totally different thing 

 from a hand. 



* Professor Andreas AVagner, the highest living authonty on the Mammalia, 

 says, very judiciously, (Schrcbers Siingethierc Suppt. Band, Erste Abtheilung, 1840, 

 p. 13.) " Wcnn Mann demnach der vordernExtremitat des Affen mit Recht cine Hand 

 zuschreibt, zo kann man der hintern nur uneigentlich eine solche beilcgcn, da 

 ihr weseutliche StUcke ziir Berichtigung auf diescn Nameu abgehen." 



