CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 7 



fashion in which the tendril of a creeper will twine round a support 

 which it comes to touch. So also, in the danger of the woods, the 

 new-born gorilla or chimpanzee must cling from the first to the body 

 of its mother, or perish miserably. In a few days the observing 

 and reflecting parts of the brain awaken, automatic action becomes 

 less important, and is replaced by a medley of instinct and intelligence. 

 In the lower monkeys, and especially in lemurs, although the young 

 cling to their mothers, the automatic period is shorter, and the 

 babies, almost from the first, show what looks like conscious, 

 independent movement. Human babies and the babies of apes 

 and monkeys differ from their parents in proportions. The heads 

 are relatively larger, especially in the higher creatures, and the 

 legs and arms are relatively shorter. They all, as a rule, are born 

 with some hair, but this is more scanty and more different in texture 

 and colour than that of the parents in human beings and the great 

 apes, more like that of the parents, in abundance, texture and colour, 

 in the lower monkeys and lemurs. Special growths of hair, like 

 beards and crests, special patches of colour on the face and body, 

 like the brilliant scarlet and blue on the face of the mandrill, are 

 absent. I need not waste time recalling familiar differences like 

 the absence of teeth, and of bony ridges on the head, the softness of 

 the bones, the protruding stomachs and the general plumpness and 

 roundness of the body. 



I have already said of this group of young animals that although 

 there is a fairly close resemblance with the parents, we cannot 

 always be certain of the particular species to which an infant 

 belongs. The reason of this difficulty lies in the striking circum- 

 stance that the young of nearly allied animals are much more alike 

 than are the adults. No one could fail to distinguish a fully 

 grown man, gorilla, orang and chimpanzee, but in many points in 

 which the young of these creatures differ from the adults, they 

 resemble each other more closely. In the slow development of 

 every individual before birth and after birth, the characters of the 

 species are the last to be assumed. We explain this by supposing 

 that the evolution of the individual to a certain extent repeats the 

 evolution of the race. Man, the gorilla, the orang and the chim- 

 panzee had a common ancestor, and the children of these creatures 

 are more like the common ancestor, and so like each other, than are 

 the adults. We have to remember, however, that this explanation 

 is not complete, and we shall find many characters of young animals 

 to which it does not apply. The young animal owes its characters 



