40 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



the apes, as given by Wallace, in connection with this state of the 

 hair on his forearm, represents him as spending much of his time 

 like the gorilla, who, according to Livingstone, " sits in pelting 

 rain with his hands over his head." He would no doubt find the 

 thatch-like arrangement of the hair a tolerably efficient umbrella, 

 but one may doubt very much if so clever a denizen of the tropics 

 would fail to find under the great branches of trees, in a tropical 

 forest, a better covering and one more like the roofs of our houses. 

 But when we cannot find a roof to our heads we — and the orang 

 or gorilla — naturally employ a substitute, and not otherwise. 

 Be that as it may, it is doubtful if the thatch of his forearms would 

 supply him with that survival value on which the theory of Selection 

 depends, to say nothing of the fact that in its incipient stage the 

 reversal of the slope of hair, inherited from the lemur stock, would 

 be trivial and useless. 



But one must ask : " Did man's Simian ancestor really loaf 

 away so much of his time in this dull manner ? and was the running- 

 off of rain so frequent and imperative a need as to make him set 

 to work to invent this special adaptation ?" 



After some millions of years have passed since his day we are 

 not in a position to go beyond speculations, and this one seems 

 barely credible, moreover, it is quite unnecessary, as certain follow- 

 ing facts will show. 



Steps of the Inquiry. 



Having expounded the text and its context, I would mention 

 that in 1897 I came across these views of biologists as to the very 

 strange arrangement of hair on man's forearm, and was struck with 

 the inadequacy of the theory of Darwin, Wallace and Romanes 

 to account for the state of things which every man can find, if he 

 looks for it, on his own forearm. I examined a large number of 

 apes and monkeys so as to test the theory, and the results were 

 published in Nature, Vol. 55, under the title " Certain vestigial 

 characters in Man." Suffice it to say that from the evidence I 

 brought forward one had to choose between two heresies ; either 

 to deny the Simian ancestry of man or to affirm the inheritance of 

 some acquired characters ; and I chose the latter. The choice 

 of " evils " or heresies which had to be made then will serve as an 

 introduction to all that follows. 



This article was followed by a paper at the Zoological Society 

 of London on " The Hair-Slope in certain Typical Mammals," and 

 after this came a paper at the same Society, giving evidence and 

 reason why certain patterns of hair in some mammals should rank 



