36 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



We must conclude, then, that man differs from the 

 anthropoid apes chiefly in adaptational characters, 

 and that these characters are inborn or congenital. 

 They are congenital in two senses ; firstly, in the 

 sense that they develop to a certain degree under 

 what Dr. Reid calls the stimulus of nutrition, by 

 which he means nutrition, moisture, heat, and oxygen, 

 the essential conditions of all development and all 

 life ; secondly, that they attain their adult develop- 

 ment from a hereditary tendency to certain modes of 

 use and function, and from a degree of exercise which 

 would not produce the same development in any 

 other species. The new-born infant differs from 

 the adult man, but it also differs from the new-born 

 ape in all essential human characters, and that adult 

 has acquired structural peculiarities which no ape 

 could possibly acquire from any stimuli in its own 

 lifetime. Obviously these are not merely specific 

 characters, and man is not merely a species of a wider 

 genus. Adaptational differences are characteristic 

 among other animals of a genus, or of a family, or of 

 larger groups. For example, among the mammals 

 the orders are distinguished by differences of adap- 

 tation, e.g., the Cheiroptera and Carnivora ; but 

 within a single order a family may be so separated, 

 as in the case of the mole family. It is not easy to 

 find a genus so distinguished. Man thus appears to 

 have the rank of a family. The condition of the hair 

 in man might possibly be regarded as a diagnostic 

 character which is not adaptive ; if the absence of 

 hair on the body be explained by uselessness, still the 



