VARIETIES IN EPIDERMIS 155 



would find the harder, rougher skin of an African baboon very- 

 inferior for the purpose. Here, indeed, I have ventured on the 

 edge of Tom Tiddler's ground, and the Pan -Selectionist or Mendeliar 

 will make a grab at me so that I escape with just the loss of a portion 

 of clothing. After escaping I have only to observe to him as to the 

 adaptations of a loris's hand and foot that in human life, of which 

 we know a little, one can in a measure forecast what a man wiH be 

 like if we are told on reliable authority what he and his ancestors 

 have not done in the way of muscular or cerebral output, without 

 information as to what he has done. This is too obvious, but also 

 too complex to prove here by numerous illustrations and it may 

 be left as a mere suggestion as to the past life of the loris and his 

 ancestors for many generations. He has not walked in the ordinary 

 method of terrestrial mammals, he has always moved very slowly 

 about the branches of trees, he sleeps most of the day in a hollow 

 of a tree, curled up like a ball, and his home is in moist, tropical 

 regions. No habits and conditions of life could be better calculated 

 to soften and moisten the skin over his palms and soles or expose 

 it less to stimuli of friction, while even those of pressure in his 

 tenacious grasp of boughs are decidedly intermittent. Unless 

 one may assume the appearance in the distant past of some unit- 

 character of soft, moist skin in this and other Primates, it seems 

 difficult to refuse the Lamarckian claim of long, long absence of 

 effectual stimuli of friction and equally long presence of enervating 

 " negative " conditions. Proof of such a view is, of course, wanting. 



Palm and Sole of Man. 



The palm of man's hand is a miracle of adaptations for touch 

 and grasping, but has lost most of the coarse structure formed in 

 response to stimuli of pressure and friction which "we saw were 

 common in lower mammals. This indeed he shares with most 

 simian forms. The skin of our hands is now very much what we 

 make it and responds very soon to fresh positive or passive con- 

 ditions. The horny, cracked epidermis on palm and digit of the 

 old sailor may be contrasted with the soft and flexible and pale 

 surface of his twin-brother, the bank clerk, who is of studious habits 

 and has neither the vice of gardening nor golf. If one compares 

 the hand of the ordinary maid with that of her mistress the difference 

 is striking. But if one compares the hand of that mistress -with that 

 of her spinster sister who has lain for twenty years in bed or on a 

 couch, the difference is equally significant. Indeed the sofa-and- 

 bed -ridden invalid, of whom I knew a few once, but who have gone 

 out of fashion, gives the observer some useful thoughts as to the 



