FROM APE TO MAN 241 



man, excepting the eyelids, lips, palms of the hands, and 

 soles of the feet, is covered by hair, as it is, with the 

 same exceptions, in the apes. It is true that the hair is 

 very fine and small on most parts of the body of man 

 and longer on the head. But there are races of men 

 (the Ainos of Japan and the pygmies of the Upper Nile) 

 in which the hair on the body is coarser and more 

 uniformly distributed than in others, and there are 

 individuals of exceptional " hairiness " in all races of 

 man. Moreover, before birth a coat of relatively coarse 

 and abundant hair, called the " lanugo," is shed by the 

 human foetus. One variety of chimpanzee is practically 

 bald — that is to say, has no obvious hair on the cranial 

 region of the head. The celebrated " Sally," who lived 

 so long in the Zoological Gardens in London, was one of 

 this variety. When she died, I placed her brain, a 

 remarkable one, in the museum at Oxford. Thus we see 

 that neither tail nor hairiness separates apes from men. 



So, too, the notion that animals, and therefore apes, 

 do not and cannot laugh is erroneous. Many animals, 

 including chimpanzees, laugh. These men-like apes also 

 sing and dance and utter sounds (as do lower monkeys) 

 which have definite meaning, though those sounds are 

 very few in number and variety, and are separated by a 

 long period of elaboration (both of skill in vocalization 

 and in the mental development necessary to give 

 significance to the sounds produced), from what we call 

 " human language " — even from the speech of the most 

 primitive of existing men. 



It is often assumed as a matter of prejudice — with 



the intention of marking off the animal world to which 



the apes belong, from ourselves, the human race — that 



the apes show little intelligence, reasoning power, and 



16 



