BABIES AND MONKEYS. 371 



BABIES AND MONKEYS. 



By S. S. BUCKMAN. 



IT is still a matter of scientific discussion whether man is de- 

 scended from catarrhine or platyrrhine monkeys, or from the 

 Lemuroidea ; but there is little question that his ancestors were 

 monkeylike, that they were decidedly prognathous, that they 

 were covered with hair, that they had long tails, that they were 

 arboreal, and that they used both the pedes and manus as hands 

 the former more than the latter. Man's ancestors, therefore, 

 were very much like monkeys they were simial or simioid, 

 " monkeylike " ; and could he see them at the present day, an 

 unzoological critic would probably call them " monkeys " with- 

 out much cavil. 



The Latin word simus (Greek o-i/^os), whence our term " simia, 

 monkey," means literally, "flat or snub nosed." This very fea- 

 ture, so striking in monkeys as to have become a name for all of 

 them, is very remarkable in our babies. Viewed in profile, a 

 baby's nose will appear to make a concave curve, the nostrils 

 being obliquely truncate. The length of the nose is only equal 

 to the breadth across the nostrils, and those are remarkably 

 large, parted by a broad septum. During life nothing changes 

 more than the nose. As the baby grows into a child the length 

 of the nose increases faster than the breadth, so the snub-nosed 

 baby grows into a more or less long-nosed and, it may be, hook- 

 nosed adult. The snub nose remains a marked feature for a 

 longer or shorter period of life this is a matter of sex and par- 

 entage or race; but the change is gradual and imperceptible, 

 generally more expeditious in the male than in the female, corre- 

 lated with various other characters, such as intellectual attain- 

 ments or weak constitution, and producing somewhat different 

 results. The change, however, in the shape of the nose is one 

 that continues throughout life. During maturity and senescence 

 the bridge of the nose tends, as it did during childhood, to be- 

 come more and more prominent: often it will become more and 

 more convex, so that extreme old age may frequently develop an 

 aquiline nose, even in some cases to produce the nut-cracker 

 type of nose-meeting-chin so noticeable- in old people. 



It is onl}^ by a study of the face in profile, and of the face of 

 the same individual at different ages of life, that the above 

 changes can be properly noticed. The three-quarter photo- 

 graphs which we leave behind at the present day, faked up by 

 the photographer's art, will be useless to the men of the future as 

 records to tell what manner of people we were. With lapse of 

 time, the widening of the family circle, and the various incidents 



