148 ARBOREAL MAN 



not developed (although as anomalies they may occur in 

 so high a Primate as Man), and their disappearance 

 becomes completed as the perfection of the emancipation 

 of the fore-limb culminates in the power of the definitive 

 hand grasp. 



The young of Monkeys are held by their mothers, and 

 they are nursed by their mothers, as Owen has described 

 it, " in very human fashion " the mother holds the off- 

 spring whilst it suckles" at the pectoral mammary gland 

 (see Fig. 58). Lemurs do not hold and carry their off- 

 spring, but the offspring clings tight to the fur of the 

 mother, and Charles Hose has observed that when Tarsius 

 is called upon to pick up and carry her baby, she does 

 it with her teeth, as cats commonly do. But all the 

 Monkeys carry their babies, and hold them in their arms, 

 nursing them " in very human fashion." When this 

 stage is arrived at, the need for inguinal anchoring nipples 

 is past, and the more convenient pectoral mammae become 

 the permanent Primate milk-secreting glands. The 

 importance of the Primate ability to carry and nurse a 

 baby cannot be over-estimated; many of its effects are 

 produced very far beyond the limits of mere adaptations 

 of the reproductive system, and these effects will be con- 

 sidered elsewhere. 



