BABIES AND MONKEYS. 377 



vermin among them ; and thirdly, the disappearance from among 

 them of inherent and natural modesty." It is a terrible indict- 

 ment of the clothes-culture. When shall we be educated enough 

 to know that clothing and decency are not synonymous terms, 

 and that a fig leaf is a greater outrage on good taste than is abso- 

 lute nudity ? 



It is remarkable how much unnecessary suffering is inflicted 

 on infants and children because parents fail to recognize the an- 

 cestry from " animals," * and consequently the instincts, different 

 from those of adults, which children have inherited. Thus Dr. 

 Louis Robinson has pointed out that as soon as children are able 

 to shift for themselves in bed, they go to sleep on their stomachs 

 with their limbs curled up under them ; and he has rightly traced 

 this to quadrupedal ancestors. Experience shows that if mothers 

 would only recognize this ancestry, and would put their children 

 to bed less enveloped in clothes and less tightly tucked up, so that 

 these children might easily shift into the position which inherited 

 instinct tells them to assume, they (the mothers) would have far 

 more comfortable nights and better-tempered, healthier children. 



Even the very manner in which babies are got off to sleep 

 by rocking in the arms or in a cradle is an inheritance of ar- 

 boreal or monkey like ancestors, because the rocking is an imita- 

 tion of the to-and-fro swaying of the branches, and such swaying 

 would be the natural accompaniment of sleep with arboreal 

 dwellers. Any rhythmic motion seems to leave a very marked 

 impression on organisms. Thus, sailors after a long voyage com- 

 plain of their inability to sleep upon land ; because the sleep has 

 been too long associated with the rocking of the vessel. More 

 remarkable still, however, is the result of some experiments made 

 by Mr. Francis Darwin and Miss D. Pertz f on The Curvature of 

 Plants. They used an intermittent klinostat, arranged so as to 

 reverse the influence of gravity on a growing shoot or stalk every 

 half hour. When the clock was stopped they found that the 

 rhythmic movement still continued, that the shoot or stalk actu- 

 ally curved in opposition to gravity for the half-hourly interval 

 before finally obeying the impulse to grow downward. In the case 

 of heliotrophic curvature the effect was even more marked. 

 " After the clock was stopped the seedlings curved away from the 

 light for tivo half-hourly intervals separated by one of curvature 

 toward the light, so strongly were they imbued with the artifi- 

 cially induced rhythm." What is remarkable in these cases is 



* " Christians " and " animals " is the popular classification. See, too, Ibsen, An 

 Enemy of the People, interruption in Dr. Stockmann's speech, " We are not animals, 

 doctor " (Act iv). 



f Journal of Botany, cit. Natural Science, vol. ii, p. 9. 



