Mammal!: 

 Man 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



412 



to them, because that form is the best 

 adapted for progression through the water. 

 But that form has been, so to speak, put on 

 round the mammalian skeleton, and covers 

 all the organs proper to the mammalian 

 class. Whales and porpoises, notwithstand- 

 ing their form, and their habitat, and their 

 food, are as separate from fishes as the ele- 

 phant, or the hippopotamus, or the giraffe. 

 ARGYLL Reign of Law, ch. 4, p. 119. 

 (Burt.) 



2 1 5 . MAMMALIA THE CROWN OF 

 ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT Nature's Su- 

 preme Purpose to Create the Mother and the 

 Family. Ask the zoologist what, judging 

 from science alone, Nature aspired to from 

 the first, he could but answer, Mammalia- 

 mothers. In as real a sense as a factory is 

 meant to turn out locomotives or clocks, the 

 machinery of Nature is designed in the last 

 resort to turn out mothers. You will find 

 mothers in lower nature at every stage of 

 imperfection; you will see attempts being 

 made to get at better types; you find 

 old ideas abandoned and higher models com- 

 ing to the front. And when you get to the 

 top you find the last great act was but to 

 present to the world a physiologically per- 

 fect type. It is a fact which no human 

 mother can regard without awe, which no 

 man can realize without a new reverence for 

 woman and a new belief in the higher mean- 

 ing of Nature, that the goal of the whole 

 plant and animal kingdoms seems to have 

 been the creation of a family, which the 

 very naturalist has had to call Mammalia. 

 DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, ch. 8, p. 268. 

 (J. P., 1900.) 



20 16. M.AMMOTH LINKS OLD 

 WORLD WITH NEW Giant Organisms 

 Perishable. The mammoth, or Elephas 

 primigenius, had very extensive geograph- 

 ical range. Its remains are found in North 

 America, but not east of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains nor south of Columbia River; in the 

 Old Continent, from the farthest extremity 

 of Siberia to the extreme west of Europe, 

 occurring, tho rarely, even in Ireland; it 

 crossed the Alps, and established itself in 

 Italy as far southward as Rome, but it has 

 not yet been discovered in Naples, in any of 

 the Mediterranean islands, or in Scandi- 

 navia. In Spain and Denmark it occurs, 

 but is very rare. AVEBURY Prehistoric 

 Times, ch. 9, p. 273. (A., 1900.) 



2017. MAN, ADAPTATION OF, TO 

 ERECT POSTURE Structure of Manlike 

 Apes Brings Body Down. In man the open- 

 ing at the base of the skull (occipital fora- 

 men ) , through which the spinal cord passes 

 up into the brain, is farther to the front 

 than in the apes, so that his skull, instead 

 of pitching forward, is balanced on the top 

 of the atlas vertebra (so called from At- 

 las supporting the globe). ... As he 

 stands upright, the feet serve -as bases, en- 

 abling the legs to carry the trunk. Thus 

 the erect posture, only imitated with diffi- 



cult effort by the showman's performing 

 animals, is to man easy and unconstrained. 

 . . . Of the monkey tribes, many walk 

 fairly on all fours as quadrupeds, with legs 

 bent, arms straightened forward, soles and 

 palms touching the ground. But the higher 

 manlike apes are adapted by their structure 

 for a climbing life among the trees, whose 

 branches they grasp with feet and hands. 

 When the orang-utan takes to the ground he 

 shambles clumsily along, generally putting 

 down the outer edge of the feet and the bent 

 knuckles of the hands. The orang and 

 gorilla have the curious habit of resting on 

 their bent fists, so as to draw their bodies 

 forward between their long arms, like a 

 cripple between his crutches. The nearest 

 approach that apes naturally make to the 

 erect attitude is where the gibbon will go 

 along on its feet, touching the ground with 

 its knuckles first on one side and then on 

 the other, or will run some distance with its 

 arms thrown back above its head to keep 

 the balance, or when the gorilla will rise on 

 its legs and rush forward to attack. . . . 

 The apes thus present interesting intermedi- 

 ate stages between quadruped and biped. 

 But only man is so formed that, using his 

 feet to carry him, he has his hands free for 

 their special work. TYLOR Anthropology, 

 ch. 2, p. 40. (A., 1899.) 



2O18. MAN A MACHINE OF INFI- 

 NITE DELICACY The Rifle Calculable, the 

 Sportsman Incalculable Human Actions 

 Defy Prediction. Altho it is undoubtedly a 

 delicately constructed machine, yet a rifle 

 does not represent the same surpassing deli- 

 cacy as that, for instance, which character- 

 izes an egg balanced on its longer axis. 

 Even if at full cock, and with a hair-trigger, 

 we may be perfectly certain it will not go 

 off of its own accord. Altho its object is to 

 produce a sudden and violent transmutation 

 of energy, yet this requires to be preceded 

 by the application of an amount of energy, 

 however small, to the trigger, and if this be 

 not spent upon the rifle it will not go off. 

 There is, no doubt, delicacy of construction, 

 but this has not risen to the height of incal- 

 culability, and it is only when in the hands 

 of the sportsman that it becomes a machine 

 upon the condition of which we cannot cal- 

 culate. Now, in making this remark, we 

 define the position of the sportsman himself 

 in the universe of energy. The rifle is deli- 

 cately constructed, but not surpassingly so ; 

 but sportsman and rifle together form a ma- 

 chine of surpassing delicacy, ergo the sports- 

 man himself is such a machine. We thus 

 begin to perceive that a human being, or in- 

 deed an animal of any kind, is in truth a 

 machine of a delicacy that is practically 

 infinite, the condition or motions of which 

 we are utterly unable to predict. In truth, 

 is there not a transparent absurdity in the 

 very thought that a man may become able 

 to calculate his own movements, or even 

 those of his fellow? STEWART Conservation 

 of Energy, ch. 6, p. 412. (Hum., 1880.) 



