THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY. 79 



pels us to make an apparent exception here at the 

 very outset, it will be seen that the allusion is harm 

 less. For the analogy we are about to make might 

 with equal relevancy have been drawn from a squirrel 

 or a sloth. 



On the theory that human beings were once allied 

 in habit as well as in body with some of the Apes, that 

 they probably lived in trees, and that baby-men clung 

 to their climbing mothers as baby-monkeys do to-day, 

 Dr. Louis Robinson prophesied that a baby s power of 

 grip might be found to be comparable in strength to 

 that of a young monkey at the same period of develop 

 ment. Having special facilities for such an investiga 

 tion, he tested a large number of just-born infants 

 with reference to this particular. Now although most 

 people have some time or other been seized in the 

 awful grasp of a baby, few have any idea of the abnor 

 mal power locked up in the tentacles of this human 

 octopus. Dr. Robinson s method was to extend to 

 infants, generally of one hour old, his ringer, or a 

 walking stick, to imitate the branch of a tree, and see 

 how long they would hang there without, what the 

 newspapers call, &quot;any other visible means of support.&quot; 

 The results are startling. Dr. Robinson has records 

 of upwards of sixty cases in which the children were 

 under a month old, and in at least half of these the ex 

 periment was tried within an hour of birth : &quot; In every 

 instance, with only two exceptions, the child was able 

 to hang on to the finger or a small stick, three- 

 quarters of an inch in diameter, by its hands, like an 

 acrobat from a horizontal bar, and sustain the whole 

 weight of its body for at least ten seconds. In twelve 

 cases, in infants under an hour old, half a minute 



