32 THE RING OF NATURE 



The squirrel is the monkey of the rodent tribe. 

 Its feet, compared with those of the rabbit, are 

 wonderfully elaborated for a climbing life. The 

 fingers are long and thin, with claws for hooking 

 into the bark of a tree, like climbing irons, whereas 

 the monkey climbs like an expert alpinist with 

 the padded tips of its fingers. Let any man tackle 

 the rough bark of an unswarmable oak in this 

 way, and he will get something like a revelation. 

 With two fingers of each hand hooked on pro- 

 jections not twice the thickness of a penny, he can 

 hang the weight of his body what time he gets a 

 lodgment of the same kind for each of his nail- 

 edged boots. He could climb no better in stockings, 

 because the toes are not prehensile, and their pads 

 cannot be brought into action on account of the 

 nails. 



The squirrel, working with nails instead of toe- 

 pads, brings his hind-feet into action almost 

 exactly in the same way as we use the climbing 

 irons, catching the hooks in well out on each 

 side of the line of the body. It is his work in 

 the smaller branches that has most modified its 

 members however. The thumb instead of being 

 opposable, as in the monkeys and man, is almost 

 aborted. The gymnast on the horizontal bar 

 never uses his thumbs, has to work, in fact, on the 

 assumption that he has no thumbs. He wraps 

 his fingers round, and hangs on by their pressure. 

 If he had nothing but horizontal bar work all his 

 life, and life after life, his thumbs would become 



