i2o THE ASCENT OF MAN 



peculiarities are congenital, and the total absence 

 or partial presence of hair on the second phalanges 

 is constant in different species of Quadrumana. 

 . . . The downward direction of the hair on 

 the backs of the hands is exactly the same in 

 man as it is in all the anthropoid apes. Again, with 

 regard to hair, Darwin notices that occasionally 

 there appear in man a few hairs in the eyebrows 

 much longer than the others ; and that they seem 

 to be a representation of similarly long and scat- 

 tered hairs which occur in the chimpanzee, macacus, 

 and baboon. Lastly, about the sixth month the 

 human foetus is often thickly covered with some- 

 what long dark hair over the entire body, except 

 the soles of the feet and palms of the hands, 

 which are likewise bare in all quadrumanous ani- 

 mals. This covering, which is called the lanugo, 

 and sometimes extends even to the whole fore- 

 head, ears, and face, is shed before birth. So that 

 it appears to be useless for any purpose other than 

 that of emphatically declaring man a child of the 

 monkey."^ The uselessness of these relics, apart 

 from the remarkable and detailed nature of the 

 homologies just brought out, is a circumstance 

 very hard to get over on any other hypothesis 

 than that of Descent. 



^ Darwin and After Darwin, pp. 89-92. 



