524 



THE EVOLTTTION OF THE HUMAN FOOT. 



characters b}^ which it resembles more closely the foot of animals than 

 does the foot of existing man. 



If the foot of man presents marked resemblances to a foot adapted 



for arboreal life, if these 

 characters are marked among 

 the inferior races, the fetus 

 or the child, and prehistoric 

 man, we have reason to think 

 that the human foot is derived 

 from the arboreal tvpe. M. 

 Volkov treats oid}^ of the 

 comparative anatomy, merely 

 touching upon the embry- 

 ology. 



The study of the human 

 foot taken as a whole, with- 

 out separating it into its com- 

 ponent parts, furnished M. 

 Volkov no important infor- 

 mation relative to the historj' 

 of its development. 



Having established the fact 

 that climbers have generally 

 longer feet than walkers, 

 which is explained ver}" well 

 by their being obliged to grasp branches, sometimes of large caliber, 

 he sought to ascertain whether men of the so-called inferior races 

 have, as might he expected, feet relatively longer than those of Euro- 

 peans, thus approaching in that character an ancestral. arl)oreal type. 



He w^as unable to record any positive results in this 

 respect, the individual differences being more consid- 

 erable than the differences of races. 



In the same way, having noticed that the feet of 

 ar]H)real living animals are narrower than those that 

 walk, in which the l)ase of sustentation has to be as 

 solid as possible, he thought he might tind that the 

 foot of the inferior races was narrower than that of 

 Europeans. 



As a matter of fact, the contrary is the case, and 

 the greatest relative width of feet occurs among the 

 negritos, a circumstance explained by the very ni;. rked 

 divergence of the great toe, one atavistic character 

 masking another. 



On the other hand, the human foot surpasses in relative height that 

 of the arboreal animals; he found that, in this respect, the foot of the 



Fig. 'i.— Feet of Anthropoids (upper surface).— I, OrauK 

 II, Gibbon. Ill, Chimpanzee. IV, Gorilla. 



Feetol a nt'.u'rita. 



