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of its feet, or rather of the front part of the foot—the heel is 
not put down; and when the child first tries to walk it always 
does so on its toes—the ankle and heel which correspond to the 
monkey’s hock and os calcis being elevated and kept off the 
ground, as in monkeys walking on a branch. Further, the 
child is more or less bow-legged—the result of its ancestors’ 
tree-climbing habits; it turns its feet in, and it curls its toes, 
especially the big toe, as if to grip the carpet—just as a 
monkey would have to do to grip a branch. Often at this 
stage the child will progress for a while and then support 
itself on all fours. Only at a later stage does the heel touch 
the ground, while the feet are turned straighter in front. By 
this time our children have almost entirely lost that peculiar 
ability to move the toe- and ankle-joints, which they had 
just after birth. 
All these processes represent the manner in which the 
adult monkey-like ancestors must have acquired the power of 
walking. Just asa man does not acquire the character of a 
definitely-formed hand-writing until nearly mature—and even 
after that gains greater and greater speed with practice—so 
it is reasonable to imagine that the monkey-ancestors, or what- 
ever one calls them, were, at one stage of the phylogenetic 
series, unable to bend their hocks sufficiently to touch the 
ground until they became mature, and had had much practice. 
So to walk as we are able to do now must have been an accom- 
plishment only acquired by adults at a still later date in the 
phylogenetic series.* During all these stages, too, there 
would have been a gradual reduction in the length of the 
metatarsus, as the enormous leverage would be very unnecessary. 
The gradual loss of power over the muscles of the toes 
and ankles has, among our own children, been accelerated by 
the practice of wearing boots. Even in this matter, however, 
earlier inheritance is exemplified; because when boots first 
{* This is proved by the adult Gorilla, which, though a very powerful 
animal, is unable to walk freely on its hind legs—it helps itself with its arms. 
In power of walking the adult Gorilla is a morphological equivalent of a twelve 
months’-old human infant. | 
