158 THE SENSE OF TOUCH IN ANIMALS 



for they directly contradict the view they would be supposed 

 to support. They should, on Miss Whipple's view of their 

 origin, be traceable to some more highly developed patterns 

 in ancestral forms. But they are mere " foundlings," no 

 recorded patterns being recognised by which they are found 

 to be the degenerate descendants. It is, indeed, a case of 

 " Japhet in search of a father," and no success in the search. 

 Miss Whipple admits as much of these secondary patterns 

 when she speaks of them as having "greater physiological 

 than morphological importance." This is a true bill, and 

 applies in my opinion, to the whole series of patterns, primary 

 and secondary, and they are, in that view, essentially physio- 

 logical modifications, their ancestry being a matter of minor 

 and doubtful importance. A similar difficulty is felt in the 

 case of the complex apical patterns in man, for according to 

 the theory under discussion, these are the descendants of 

 more perfect typical patterns. Now, I venture to say of 

 the highest of these patterns, the whorls, that they are another 

 group of " foundhngs," and can find no pedigree among the 

 whole mammalian series examined either by Miss Whipple, 

 Schlaginhaufen, or myself. The nearest approach to a whorl, 

 as it is here called, or " typical pattern," as Miss Whipple calls 

 it, in lower mammals, is in the elhptical patterns in numerous 

 Monkeys and in the Anthropoid Apes, which, in certain digits, 

 become more broadened out than in others. Miss Whipple's 

 figure of Macacus, p. 273, is only a diagram, and not a print 

 or drawing, but even this gives no such pattern as could 

 be the ancestral type of the perfectly shaped whorls so 

 common in man's digits. In the Kinkajou, and some of the 

 Anthropoids, there are arches on the apical pads, and in the 

 Anthropoid well-marked loops, but nowhere a properly formed 

 whorl. The interdigital patterns have too much been taken 

 as tj^ical and primitive, to the exclusion of the careful con- 

 sideration of the apical patterns. But if the secondary patterns 

 are looked upon as adaptations of difJering value, arches the 

 lowest, loops the next, and whorls the liighest, for increasing 

 the acuteness of the sense of touch, there is no difficulty of 



