176 



INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



Fig. 73 represents the clumsy, thick walking-pads of a 

 marsupial the vulpine phalanger, trichosurus vulpecula. 



Fig. 74, the highly-developed prehensile foot of the loris. 

 Fig. 75, the foot of a ring-tailed lemur. 



Fig. 76, the foot of a squirrel -monkey (Chrysothrix Sciurea), 



Fig. 77, the foot of a macacus 

 (Macacus cynomologus). 



Fig. 78, the foot of a gibbon. 

 Fig. 79, the hand of a chim- 

 panzee and here the resemblance 

 to the hand of man and not to the 

 foot of man is very striking. 



A description has already been 

 given of man's flexures of the 

 palm. 



Fig. 80 is a careful drawing 

 of the sole of a young active 

 woman with a well-formed foot, 

 and there is little typical in the 

 mode of arrangement of its creases 

 except the slight tendency to 

 transverse lines of flexure. In all 

 the feet I have examined I have 

 found no single flexure that is 

 constant, and the longitudinal ones 

 here shown are often absent. 



Reviewing these examples one 

 observes an evolutional decay of a 

 minor but necessary piece of 

 mechanism of the Primate hand and 

 foot. The general similarity, mutatis 

 mutandis, of the flexures of the 

 palm and sole in Primates is very 

 noticeable, and is associated with the 

 strong prehensile power of the 

 foot of all the forms below man. 

 In the cases of the two apes 

 shown in this series, the resemblance is still well marked, 

 more so even in the chimpanzee than the gibbon, so that 

 the disappearance from the sole of man's foot of any 

 important flexure is very significant of his loss of prehensile 

 and gain of locomotive perfection, and I find it impossible to 

 conceive any process of evolutionary change where a loss of the 



Fig. 80. — Drawing of flexures of 

 sole of foot in young adult. 



