i899 S. S. BUCKMAN— HUMAN BABIES 99 



a special instance of making the best of a bad job — the loss 

 of a coat : beside him a cat shows what he may envy. And 

 in adapting a quadrupedal body to a bipedal gait he has 

 laboured under great disadvantages : his want of success 

 is attested by many complaints to which he is subject. 

 Then in adapting the stomach of his herbivorous ancestors 

 to an organ fit for his i)resent diet, he has been re- 

 markably unsuccessful. He retains a relic of the stomach 

 of his herbivorous ancestors in the vermiform appendix, 

 which is not only totally useless to him, but has often been 

 a cause of death. Then, in the present day, Man, adapting 

 himself to the sedentary life, shows, in the trouble with his 

 digestive, urinary, and other organs, in neurotic affections, 

 and the great increase of insanity, how ill-suited he is to 

 the conditions of his environment. He has been forced, 

 comparatively recently, to adopt new ways of living: to 

 acquire the necessary adaptation will require thousands of 

 years, and cost a terrible sacrifice of life. 



One more point about the hands — Man does not get over 

 what may be called the "set" of the bough-grasping 

 attitude until he is some 5, 6, or more years old. Two of 

 mv children, aged 6 and 5 years respectively, were told to 

 hold out their hands as straight as they possibly could. I 

 photographed their hands, and the bough-grasping curve is 

 very apparent — both hands have a forward bending of the 

 fingers : the children were unable to straighten them out. 



I stopped several village school children — boys and girls 

 — on one occasion, and offered a prize to the one who could 

 hold out the fingers the straightest, showing them what 

 was wanted. It was most interesting : the failure of some 

 of them to straighten the fingers was ludicrous. Practi- 

 cally all but one showed a more or less definite curvature. 

 The exception, who took the prize, was a girl — not the 

 oldest of the group. 



