THE ORiaiN OF MAN 125 



toe that it is rather pathetic to find Huxley falling back upon 

 this argument. And it is surprising to find him instancing 

 the mobility of the big toe of the unbooted savage as evidence 

 of opposability. Every one is acquainted with the manifold 

 uses to which the power of flexion, of adduction and of ab- 

 duction of the big toe is put in unbooted races, but it is safe 

 to affirm that no one has seen a native race in which oppos- 

 ability of the big toe exists. At the time, however, Huxley's 

 tales of the Chinese boatmen, the Bengal weavers and the 

 thieving Carajos satisfied his hearers and his readers that only 

 a slight difierence in degree separated the mobility of the 

 human big toe from that of the ape ; and another human 

 distinction was swept from men's minds. As for the curious 

 shape of the human foot, with its long big toe and the decreas- 

 ing digital series to the almost rudimentary little toe, this was 

 certainly very difierent from the outline of the ape's foot, but 

 then what could be expected when toes were confined in boots 1 



This boot argument has proved such a talisman in account- 

 ing for the curious digital formula of the human foot that 

 one despairs of ever seeing it eliminated from any discussion 

 of the subject. Yet in truth it may be dismissed very simply. 

 The peculiar, and absolutely specific, human digital formula 

 is the same in the unbooted races as in the booted. In the 

 baby at birth the big toe is just as dominant, and the little 

 toe just as atrophic, as it is in the adult town-dweller who 

 wears the latest dictates of fashion in the form of boots. 

 More than this, the embryo within the uterus shows exactly 

 the same features, and from that early time when digits first 

 appear upon the limb -bud of the developing embryo the 

 human foot is just as specific — just as distinct from anything 

 seen in the monkeys or apes — as it is in the adult. This is 

 a very simple and easily verified fact, but it is a very far- 

 reaching one. Obviously if ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny 

 the human foot cannot be a thing which, only slightly modified 

 — and for the most part by boot pressure — departed from 

 the type prevalent in the anthropoid apes by trivial readjust- 

 ments acquired in very recent times. 



It cannot be, as Huxley lulled his followers into believing, 



