THE PLANTAR ARCH 195 



to answer Solvitur Ambulando. But I hear judges and counsel 

 both saying " This will never do," and must address myself 

 to opening up the case. 



If an adventurous gorilla and his mate, whom we may call 

 gorilla Columbi, had long ago made a bid for a life completely 

 terrestrial rather than partly arboreal, it is difficult to imagine 

 how the feet of this pair could have failed to adjust themselves 

 and their separate tarsal elements to a better if rudimentary form 

 like that of man, and that their progeny would not have followed 

 or improved upon this. Professor Keith, 1 in his work referred to, 

 and Professor Wood Jones in Arboreal Man, have much to say on 

 the evolution of man's foot and arch, and I mention this ab initio 

 so as to be free from any supposed claim to originality which is apt 

 in the present extended range of scientific progress to be as damaging 

 to a man as for him to proclaim his honesty or a woman her virtue. 

 And I also formally grant to the Mendelians and Mutationists, with- 

 out offence and with some possible relief to their minds, a period 

 of leave from this poor trench -warfare — Plasto-ditethesis will not be 

 obliged to call in at the place of its hyphen any reinforcements 

 from these of the higher command. 



The assumed precursor of our human walker was probably 

 more highly evolved in his own special line than the real ancestor, 

 but we have so little yet of discoveries of whole skeletons of earliest 

 man that the bodily structure of gorilla C. may fairly be taken 

 as a starting point, indeed he is for this purpose a valuable lay- 

 figure, almost artistic for once, on which may be draped the follow- 

 ing story of the making of an arch. The ultimate verdict, which 

 word I use in the old English sense of a "true saying " rather than 

 the most recent declaration of those who " ride on white asses and 

 sit in judgment," does not therefore invalidate the verisimilitude 

 of this picture. One may go farther and affirm that, given certain 

 anatomical and physiological facts in an earlier Primate stock, 

 which marvellously resemble those of modern man, and it must 

 follow as the night the day that his more primitive phj'sical basis 

 employed in a new mode of progression, that is of terrestrial walking 

 on two feet, will be converted by use and habit into the construction 

 of such new formations as will best agree with the new style — in 

 other words, in this instance, a plantar arch. 



An Unique Phenomenon. 



That a plantar arch is peculiar to man is a matter of fact, 

 and Lydekker in the Royal Natural History, Vol. I., p. 41, says 



1 Human Embryology and Morphology. 



o2 



