12 FEET AND HANDS 



I have said that the foot first appeared when the 

 backboned creatures came out of the waters to live 

 upon the dry land. But all mundane things (not 

 excepting politics) tend to move in circles, ending 

 where they began ; and so the foot, if we follow it 

 far enough, will take us back into water. See how 

 the rat — I mean our common, omnivorous, scaven- 

 ging, thieving, poaching brown rat — when it lives 

 near a pond or stream, learns to swim and dive as 

 naturally as a duck. Next comes the vole, or 

 water-rat, which will not live away from water. 

 Then there are water shrews, the beaver, otter, 

 duck-billed platypus, and a host of others, not 

 related, just as, among birds, there are water ousels, 

 moorhens, ducks, divers, etc., which have per- 

 manently made the water their home and seek their 

 living in it. All these have attained to web-footed- 

 ness in a greater or less degree. 



That this has occurred among reptiles, beasts, 

 and birds alike shows what an easy, or natural, or 

 obvious (put it as you will) modification it is. And 

 it has a consequence not to be escaped. Just as a 

 man who rides a great deal and never walks acquires 

 a certain indirectness of the legs, and you never 

 mistake a jockey for a drill-sergeant, so the web- 

 footed beasts are not among the things that are 

 " comely in going." 



Following this road you arrive at the seal and sea- 

 lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know 

 only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted 



