THE FOUR HANDS OF AN ANTHROPOID 



The hands of the great apes are not much inferior to those of man, and their feet are ahnost 

 as good as their hands for grasping. Now it is supposed that the development of the power 

 of grasp is one of the things that gave the human stock its supremacy in the evolutionary 

 competition. Since the anthropoids are better endowed for grasping the limbs of trees than 

 is man, why should they not have gone ahead? Photograph by E. R. Sanborn, New York 

 Zoological Society. (Fig. 3.) 



picture has been greatly overdrawn; for 

 if man's ancestors were arboreal, and 

 perhaps never ran about on four legs 

 on the ground, it must be noted that an 

 animal sitting in a tree is almost as up- 

 right as is one standing on two legs on 

 the ground. 



"The upright poise of Man has been 

 lauded as one of his greatest distinc- 

 tions. This praise of human upright- 

 ness has, without doubt, been carried 

 to absurd extremes, so also has the tend- 

 ency to ascribe to this same upright- 

 ness a multitude of human weaknesses 

 and disabilities. This visceral upright- 

 ness is no new thing; the readjustment 

 has been gradual, and some measure 

 of it has been very long established. It 

 is easy to overdo the praise of the poise. 



It is equally easy to overdo the condem- 

 nation of it as a cause of many human 

 ills." 



One of the consequences of arboreal 

 life which has not often been em- 

 phasized is the reduction in number of 

 offspring. Large litters can only be pro- 

 duced where the female is living in a 

 sheltered situation during pregnancy; 

 they can only be cared for in a position 

 that is much safer than a tree-top. 

 But Professor Wood Jones ascribes to 

 the arboreal habit a change of still 

 greater importance — that which has 

 produced the human brain. 



In the forerunners of the mammals 

 the sense of smell was the principal 

 "mental" possession, and this con- 

 tinues to be true even in many low 



537 



