ORGANIC EVOLUTION 51 



found as a result of sixty experiments on as many 

 infants, more than half of whom were less than an 

 hour old, that with two exceptions every babe was 

 able to hang to the finger or to a small stick, and 

 sustain the whole weight of the body for at least 

 ten seconds. Twelve of those just born held on 

 for nearly a minute. At the age of two or three 

 weeks, when this power is greatest, several suc- 

 ceeded in sustaining themselves for over a minute 

 and a half, two for over two minutes, and one for 

 two minutes and thirty-five seconds. The young 

 ape for some weeks after birth clings tenaciously 

 to its mother's neck and hair, and the instinct of 

 the child to cling to objects is probably a survival 

 of the instinct of the young ape. I believe it 

 is Wallace who relates somewhere an incident 

 which illustrates the instinct of the young simian 

 to cling to something. Wallace had captured 

 a young ape, and was carrying it to camp, when 

 the little fellow happened to get its hands on 

 the naturalist's whiskers, which it mistook, evi- 

 dently, for the hirsute property of its mother, 

 and, driven by the powerful instinct of self-pre- 

 servation, it hung on to them so desperately it 

 could scarcely be pulled loose. Many mammals 

 are provided with a well-developed muscular 

 apparatus for the manipulation of their ears. But 

 in man there does not exist the same necessity for 

 auricular detection of enemies, and while these 

 muscles still exist, and are capable of being used 

 to a slight extent by occasional individuals, they 

 are generally so emaciated as to be useless. 



4—2 



