196 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



of the gorilla's foot incidentally " there is no sort of resemblance 

 to the human instep in the whole foot," and Professor Keith in 

 the work referred to " the arch is a human character." One may 

 see this for oneself in living apes and monkeys and in the wonderful 

 series of drawings of apes in all kinds of postures in the Royal 

 Natural History, and indeed in the feet of dead apes and monkeys. 

 All Primates other than man walk on a flat sole. 



Equipment. 



Our adventurer starts with the following equipment of tools 

 for making his arch as he learns to walk entirely on the ground 

 which it must be remembered he can only do by unlearning pari 

 passu his highly cultivated power of grasping with his foot. The 

 old and the new cannot flourish together. The evolving foot of 

 man is an example of a slow change in the function of an organ and 

 consequent modification of certain structures in it. He walks with 

 his feet turning in, or in the axis of the leg ; his great toe is not in 

 this axis but may even lie at a right angle to the foot ; he rests 

 weight on his heel and even more on the outer border of his sole, 

 and thus the sole of one foot turns more or less towards the other ; 

 and he puts a good deal of weight on his toes which are frequently 

 doubled over ; and his gait, though erect, is never completely 

 so, and is clumsy in appearance. 



Bones : his heel-bone is relatively long and pointed and 

 slightly arched below ; the bones of his great toe are short and thick, 

 and the other four toes relative^ long and slender. You can see 

 at once it is not primarily a walking foot. Any active boy of 

 twelve could give him points and a beating in a race for life in the 

 open . Further, his foot shows a much larger proportion of the whole 

 foot in front of the end of the great toe than is ever seen in man. 

 The ligaments which bind the joints of his foot together, while 

 the muscles play upon them, are little different from those he will 

 require for the girders of his arch, except for such a throwing out 

 of slips, and shifting under the stresses and strains of such walking 

 as his new gait involves. 



The muscles of his leg and foot are the most important by far 

 of his original equipment with which to set about making his arch : 

 he could no more do this out of his present muscles than a Hebrew 

 could make bricks without clay. It is these variable and plastic 

 structures which are most readily adapted by use in a fresh direction 

 or increased degree. He has the great flexors of the ankle and foot 

 in his poorty-shaped calf (this feature might be adduced as a human 

 character and studied in this manner if it were not of so elusive 



