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 jirawn 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 finger, or a 

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

 how long they would hang there without, what the 

 newspapers call, " any other visible means of support." 

 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 : " 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 



