526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There is no doubt that the very earliest men spent their lives 

 much as monkeys now do. They probably lived partly in trees 

 before they learned how to build houses in 

 which they could take shelter from bad weather 

 and when threatened by animals that were much 

 stronger and could run far more swiftly than 

 they. Thus our hands were once developed for 

 climbing about trees, and since that time have 

 changed very litle in shape. As man became 

 civilized, his hands were put to nobler uses; they 

 were his best instruments for accomplishing all he 

 achieved. Our hands are thus much more flexible 

 Fig. 7. and capable of a far greater variety of movements 



than the hands of the less civilized monkey. 

 The hind foot of the monkey was not well suited for man's way 

 of life. One great difference between man and the monkeys is that 

 man walks and runs in an upright position on his hind feet alone, 

 while even the most manlike of the apes walk only partly upright, 

 not supported entirely by their feet but helped along by their hands, 

 which, on account of the great length of the arms, can easily reach 

 the ground. In a man, walking upright, the weight of the body is 

 thrown entirely on the hind limbs, which in him become the lower 

 limbs, and the feet are needed to form a firm pedestal for the whole 

 upright body. Thus in man, the once climbing feet having given 

 up climbing, the useless thumb gradually changed back again into a 

 simple great toe, and the first joints of the rays lengthened out to 

 form a firm flat sole. We can still see some signs of the former 

 thumblike condition of the great toe in little children and in some 

 foreign races. In babies, the great toe is often more or less op- 

 posable to the others, and among the Japanese it is still so much so 

 that a Japanese workwoman often holds the work she wants to stretch 

 between her toes, which are able to grasp it firmly. 



Men and women have, as a rule, five toes and five fingers, the 

 largest number found in animals; but it is by no means certain that 

 this number will always be retained. The foot of a civilized man is 

 always covered by stockings and shoes, and the toes are hardly used 

 at all, and, like the toes not used in the feet of animals, appear to be 

 diminishing in size. The little toe in a comparatively large number 

 of human beings already has only two joints, and some of the other 

 toes also seem to be becoming shorter. It is thus quite possible that 

 at some future time the human little toe will altogether disappear, 

 and that man may have only four toes, or even, in course of time, 

 fewer than four. 



[Concluded.] 



