2o8 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



reader, at the hairs on your forearm. They lie in the opposite 

 direction to those on the rest of your body ; that is to say, 

 they point from the wrist to the elbow instead of downwards 

 from the elbow to the wrist. This is a relic of the days of your 

 existence when by hanging by your arms for over ten million 

 years, exposed to the wet and rain, the alternate moistening 

 and drying of the hair caused it to lie in that direction, and 

 half a million years of subsequent development under condi- 

 tions of comparative civilisation have not reversed their posi- 

 tion. This is a characteristic shared by you only with the 

 Gibbon apes, and a few other families of the anthropoid apes. 



So do not think that laws or civilisation are going to make 

 any rapid alteration in your state or conditions. It must be 

 the work of time, breeding and evolution. Hence I take it 

 that individual life is but the leaf, as it were, of the family 

 tree of existence. And that just in the same manner as each 

 leaf of the tree performs its service towards the growth of the 

 future season's leaves, seeds, and limbs of the plant, so each 

 individual life performs its sectional duty towards perfecting 

 the growth of the human family tree in the forest of nation- 

 ality. Now in each tree some leaves bloom, and lasting partly 

 through the season perform their functions, not only of absorb- 

 ing nitrogen and evaporating surplus moisture, but those that 

 continue to grow throughout the season into the autumn 

 months, as they wither, return the surplus amount of nitrogen 

 that they have absorbed in excess of what the above demands 

 require, back "into the sap to form the buds of the leaves, 

 flowers and fruit, so as to produce, during the next season, a 

 more perfect and larger crop of leaf and seed. 



But not all the leaves that bloom in spring are destined 

 to live on to the end of the autumn, but some are required only 

 in the spring of the year to create a heavy evaporation so as to 

 prevent an excess of moisture in the sap which would render 

 the seed too pulpy and so be less able to resist the tendency to 

 rot before it could take root (this is one of the most probable 

 causes of black spot and bitter pit in apples and pears) and too 

 prone to acid fermentations which would tend to reduce the 

 strength of its vitality, and make it liable to rot before it found 

 suitable soil for its growth. Other leaves are destined to fall 

 off so soon as the hot weather comes, lest by excessive updrawal 

 of moisture, or too great evaporation of water in the wood and 

 sap owing to the increase of summer warmth, they should 



