74 



Mr. W. F. Stanley on the Evolution of the 



accept the narrative of Jacob and Esau as indicating this as a 

 common occurrence at the time this narrative was written, as 

 the circumstance is mentioned without comment as anything 

 remarkable. The state of hairiness of Esau is very clearly 

 defined, in that Eebekah put the skin of a kid upon Jacob's 

 hands and upon the smooth of his neek to deceive Isaac, and we 

 are told the device answered perfectly. Very few races, even of 

 savages, retain hair over the body at the present time, and no 

 races possess it in the animal-like form of the kid here inferred. 



Proportion of limbs. — The arm in all antique works appears 

 longer in proportion than in the modern figure. The cause of 

 this is generally that the legs have increased in length, more 

 particularly the thigh-bone. The short thigh-bones are very 

 evident in all Egyptian statues. The cast of Amnothph III. 

 (B.C. 1260) in the Crystal Palace shows this in a marked degree, 

 In the excellent bas-reliefs of Sennacherib's Palace (B.C. 800), 

 in the British Museum, the arms of the figures approach nearly 

 the length of the legs. This proportion, in diminishing ratio, is 

 found to hold in Grecian works as well as with Abyssinian. 

 Thus, in the Apollo Belvedere, which has been considered the 

 most perfect form, the arm exceeds by nearly the length of the 

 hand the proportions of the modern human figure given by 

 Marshall, who is taken as the highest authority by artists. 

 That this is a progressive variation is indicated in that the child 

 at birth, as before mentioned, has arms and legs of equal length, 

 the same as many of the apes. 



The following are the modern proportions, according to 

 Marshall, of the growth of an average individual (67 inches high), 

 which I reduce from proportional scale of heads as given by 

 Marshall ■■■• to inches. 



The measurements of the legs are from the ball of the femur 

 to the sole of the foot ; the arm from the ball of the humerus to 

 the tip of the longest finger. By this table we see the much 



*'A Eule of Proportion for the Human Figure,' by John Marshall, 

 F.E.S., etc., 1871). 



