2 MAN THE ANIMAL 



here — but in essence it amounts to the formation of a new and 

 important organ every time a baby gets under way. This organ, 

 the placenta, has for its physiological purpose to make an 

 elaborate ultra-modern plumbing connection between mother 

 and baby, of such a sort that after its function of transferring 

 back and forth the stuffs that life must have and the wastes that 

 living entails it can be sloughed off by both parties to the pro- 

 tracted transaction, without any residual harm to the bodily 

 integrity of either. 



The other odd peculiarity of mammals is that, with a few 

 exceptions, they have hair. In nearly all of them it pretty well 

 covers the whole body. That this is an oddity rather than a deep 

 biological necessity is indicated by the fact that it is difficult to 

 think of any useful purpose that is served by hair that is not 

 equally or better accomplished by feathers. And if we may judge 

 by the birds it appears certain that mammals would seem more 

 beautiful if the evolution of skin appendages had been let rest 

 with the achievement of plumage. 



II 



Among the thousands of species of mammals man constitutes 

 one kind, flatteringly called Homo sapiens. Clarence Darrow 

 maneuvered William Jennings Bryan into denying this plain 

 fact some years ago, but the denial was an error that Bryan 

 shortly regretted. For man definitely is a mammal j and, as 

 will presently appear, a great part of what he is, and of what 

 he does, is ineluctably consequent upon that fact. 



When Linnaeus laid down the classification of animals that 

 in its broad essentials has not required alteration since, he put 

 the mammals at the top of the long ladder that life had climbed 

 in its evolutionary progression j and at the top of the mammals 

 and the very topmost tip of the ladder, man. It is a pleasant 

 thought that this gave him a sort of transcendental allegorical 

 background for his much later acquired and quaint habit of 

 flagpole sitting. No man in his more rational moments has ever 

 seriously questioned the rightness of placing Homo sapens 



