i899 S. S. BUCKMAN — HUMAN BABIES 95 



as it can, yet it is unable to straighten the knee-joint. 

 The comparison with the cat in a similar attitude is very 

 interesting. 



In fig. 5, PI. I., another view of the same child, the same 

 inability to straighten the knee-joints is apparent. This 

 flexure of the knee, which is a necessity for quadrupedal 

 progression, and is a heritage of great antiquity, is only lost 

 gradually in the attempts to attain the bipedal position. 

 That it is retained by the young baby in its early efforts to 

 walk, shews that Man's pre-human ancestors were accus- 

 tomed to a quadrupedal gait. 



The small ability of this baby, and others of similar ages, 

 in regard to the attainment of the bipedal gait, is analogous 

 to that shown by the Gorilla. That animal, however, 

 strong as he is, cannot attain to any greater bipedal pro- 

 ficiency throughout life ; shewing that the baby's bipedal 

 awkwardness is not the mere result of want of strength : 

 it is simply a question of heredity, and of how long the 

 race has attempted and achieved bipedal progression. Man, 

 it may be surmised, started to attain the bipedal gait long 

 before the Gorilla did ; or at any rate he has made much 

 better progress in the effort. So much better that now the 

 accumulated inheritance of the bipedal character has, as it 

 were, pushed back the quadrupedal charaGter until the 

 latter belongs merely to infancy."* Thus in bipedal attain- 

 ment adult man is far beyond the Gorilla ; while the human 

 infant is its morphic equivalent. But such equivalence 

 points to this — that Man's adult pre-human ancestors had 

 for a long time no better bipedal ability than that possessed 

 by the Gorilla. 



* The earlier inlieritance of characters, so that a prior character seems to be forced 

 back and hack, is specially illustrated in palaeontology, particularly in the progressive 

 elaboration of ornament among Ammonites. And in Brachiopods we have a capital 

 example near at home — the adult character of the earliest examples of Terebratttla fimbria 

 — the fimbriation — becomes quite a character of the early youth in the later appearing 

 examples 



