48 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



upper arm, but only true of the forearm in a very narrow streak 

 of hair over the extensor surface of the ulna. The fact is that in 

 every human being, not too old, its course can be traced with a 

 lens. He overlooks also from this protective point of view the 

 fact that the ape or early man, in the position of rest he describes, 

 would have very much the reverse of protection from the " lie " 

 of the hair on his thighs, for this is towards the knee and is well 

 calculated to catch the rain and conduct it carefully, or let it run, 

 into his groins. So the protection theory (under the empire of 

 Selection) is again in straits. But I must not forget my self- 

 denying ordinance alluded to in the Preface, but will show how 

 the ape fashion began to be modified into its present and probably 

 final form in man. Still further changes in the simple habits of the 

 earliest men became frequent, and fresh forces were organised 

 in our mimic battlefield. Gravitation gradually ceased to act 

 as the hairs became thinner and shorter. Friction and pressure 

 changed their lines of incidence with the increasing tendency of 

 man to assume the upright posture, for the surfaces exposed to 

 pressure and friction were only aflected when the extensor surface 

 or back of the forearm rested on some supporting object, an attitude 

 extremely common in man as we know him now. Then came the 

 opportunity of the primitive barbarian host, the lemur fashion, 

 by a prolonged counter-attack to recover on the greater part of the 

 forearm the ground lost millions of years before by the ape, and 

 then was engraved on the forearm of man the permanent treaty 

 which we have before us to-day. 



This small and apparently trivial battle-ground has been 

 described at what may seem undue length, but it is a miniature of 

 the rise and fall of little empires such as here engage our attention, 

 and I make no apology for this to the reader who has gone thus 

 far with me, for, on the principle of ex uno disce omnes, all that 

 follows in other areas of the hair}^ coat of mammals will be the 

 clearer, and little repetition will be needed. 



Note. — Two terms have been used somewhat freely in this Introduction, 

 " vestige " and " normal," and a few remarks upon them are not out of place, 

 for they are both somewhat ambiguous and apt to be carelessly employed. 



A vestige in biological writings is almost the exclusive property of the 

 Pan-Selectionists, and no one can doubt that on the one hand it is a far more 

 correct term than that of rudiment which Darwin employed so freely, on the 

 other that they have a perfectly legitimate claim to it in a large number of 

 obsolete structures of animal forms. But vestiges, footsteps, footprints, 

 have another and equally correct meaning, even if less often thus employed, 

 in the fact that a vestige or footprint may just as well be a relic of what the 

 race and individuals have done, as a relic of what they have retained in the 

 way of possession, and I submit that the facts and arguments I have here 

 advanced afford a valid claim to the term " vestige " in the results of certain 

 doings on the part of animals — as will appear later still more clearly. 



