CHAPTER XXI. 



THE PLANTAR ARCH. 



The principle of Lyell cannot be applied to this section of my 

 subject for it is unique in the animal world. There is here a simple 

 compilation of facts such as the medical schoolboy is supposed to 

 know, and only requires for its setting forth the valuable expert 

 knowledge of our predecessors in anatomy . It is indeed a pedestrian 

 chapter. 



Man alone possesses this mark of a high lineage, and it adds 

 point to Shakespeare's description of man as " paragon of animals," 

 and Huxley's " a superb animal, head of the sentient world." 

 For winning this integral part of a perfect walking-foot man must 

 stoop to conquer ; he must descend from the trees in order that 

 he may have life and liberty ; whether he bears the ancient surname 

 of Tarsius or the more honoured one of Pithecus matters not. 

 Names had not in those early times usurped that tyranny over 

 man's mind which they have done among his modern descendants. 

 He came into that terrestrial kingdom which was to be his own 

 with many a limitation, but with the promise and potency of an 

 unexampled evolution, when he assumed more fully the erect 

 posture and saw that his inheritance was very good. Neither 

 then nor since has he ever reached the fleetness of foot of the 

 Thibetan wild ass, the astonishing sense of smell of the dog or 

 horse, the keen sight of the hawk, or the climbing power of that 

 simian family upon whom he turned his back as on a poor relation. 

 He became par excellence the walking biped of earth, as, even 

 with greater value to his mastery of the world he learned to talk 

 in articulate language. A walking animal and a talking animal, 

 with vast stretches of time for training these new powers of his, 

 he became modified into the variegated human stocks, black, yellow 

 and white, that now inhabit the earth. 



A Crumbling Arch. 



A digression, I hope, will be pardoned here before the value 

 and beauty of the plantar arch and its mode of forging are described, 

 and it is possible the latter may add some force to the former. 

 Scientific (or, must I say ?) semi -scientific writings are not concerned 



