i 



A VERY PRIMITIVE TYPE OF LEG 



The salamander, shown above, has an exceedingly primitive leg, which 

 is of value to him in paddhng but hardly adequate to support the 

 weight of the body. It is supposed that the mammals descended from a 

 form something like this, with legs that were of very little value. Some of 

 the mammals, such as the horse, developed highly speciaHzed legs; but 

 the human stock retained its members in a relatively primitive condition, 

 a fact which has been of tremendous value in the evolution of man. 

 Photograph from above natural size by John Howard Paine. (Fig. 1.) 



mals, one might almost say, have gone 

 too far in adapting themselves to the 

 arboreal habit. An animal, saved by 

 the arboreal habit from becoming quad- 

 rupedal, does not gain the maximum of 

 the benefits derivable from its new 

 mode of life, if it is saved from this 

 fate only to become quadrumanous. 

 Four feet do not lead far in the struggle 

 for mammalian supremacy, four hands 

 do not lead a great deal farther. It was 

 the differentiation into two hands and 

 two feet that provided the great strength 

 of the stock from which man arose." 



"The human hand, a strangely, al- 

 most shockingly, primitive survival, 

 has received enormous praise mistakenly 

 lavished by the philosopher and the 

 anatomist; but the human foot, a 

 wonderfully modified and distinctly 

 human member, has had but scant 

 appreciation. . . . The foot is apt to be 

 regarded as a poor relation of the hand, 

 as a thing which, once being far more 

 useful, has degenerated, within the 

 nairow confines of a boot, into a rather 

 distorted and somewhat useless mem- 

 ber. Although in modern Man the 



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