264: CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [x, 



that the gibbons, "without having been taught, can 

 walk or run upright with tolerable quickness, though 

 they move awkwardly, and much less securely than 

 man." The Quarterly Keviewer says, " This is a 

 little misleading, inasmuch as it is not stated that 

 this upright progression is effected by placing the 

 enormously long arms behind the head, or holding them 

 out backwards as a balance in progression/ 7 



Now, before carping at a small statement like this, 

 the Quarterly Reviewer should have made sure that he 

 was quite right. But he happens to be quite wrong. 

 I suspect he got his notion of the manner in which a 

 gibbon walks from a citation in "Man's Place in Nature/' 

 But at that time I had not seen a gibbon walk. Since 

 then I have, and I can testify that nothing can be more 

 precise than Mr. Darwin's statement. The gibbon I saw 

 walked without either putting his arms behind his head 

 or holding them out backwards. All he did was to 

 touch the ground with the outstretched fingers of his 

 long arms now and then, just as one sees a man who 

 carries a stick, but does not need one, touch the ground 

 with it as he walks along. 



Again, a large number of the objections brought for- 

 ward by Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer apply 

 to evolution in general, quite as much as to the par- 

 ticular form of that doctrine advocated by Mr. Darwin ; 

 or, to their notions of Mr. Darwin's views and not to 

 what they really are. An excellent example of this class 

 of difficulties is to be found in Mr. Mivart's chapter on 

 " Independent Similarities of Structure." Mr. Mivart 

 says that these cannot be explained by an " absolute and 

 pure Darwinian," but " that an innate power and evolu- 

 tionary law, aided by the corrective action of natural 

 selection, should have furnished like needs with like aids, 

 is not at all improbable " (p. 82). 



