194 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



unpopular attitude of saying that nearly all young women have 

 feet that are deformed and ugly and, therefore, more or less in- 

 efficient. There is, alas ! only too much reason to know that the 

 evil is great among the better class, even of boys, for in 1919 Captain 

 Coote said publicly at a Schoolmasters' Conference that fully 

 30 per cent, of the new boys entering leading public schools had 

 flat-foot, and Captain Coote, the highest exponent of physical 

 training in the Navy, knows a flat-foot when he sees it. The 

 measures here suggested in connection with the feet of women 

 have the great merit that from them boys and girls will alike benefit. 



Non- Arboreal Man. 



Many problems faced non-arboreal man as he descended from 

 the trees to claim his suzerainty and place of toil. Not least 

 among them was the question of methods of protection against 

 the terrible creatures among which he was to live . Their production 

 must needs be slow, and for him to meet by " direct action " with 

 weapons invented ad hoc the fierce large carnivora and clumsy but 

 dangerous dinosaurs would have proved highly dangerous. Too 

 long had they been in possession of his Canaan, and he could not 

 cross his Jordan, walk seven times round their Jericho, blowing 

 with trumpets of rams' horns, and on the seventh day march in 

 and " consolidate his position." He had first to do what his 

 descendants have always been bound to do ; he had to learn to 

 walk terrestrially long before he could think and live imperially. 

 Sufficient for him was the evil of his day, and, as an old arboreal 

 denizen he had much to learn and not a little to unlearn ; and we 

 know from the prehistoric pictures of his own doings and trophies, 

 that he did in course of ages learn to walk, run and jump with variety 

 of step and efficiency unknown in any other Primate group . We can 

 ask, and we can but supply speculative answers as to the details 

 of how he did it, but somewhere and at some time he learned first 

 to become as good a walking animal as later he became a talking 

 one, and some at any rate of the steps of the process are plain for 

 all to read to-day. 



How the Arch was Built. 



Did I not know something of the severity of the judges in such 

 a Court of Appeal as we are facing in this case and of the opposing 

 counsel — of the jury I have less fear — I should be disposed to settle 

 on a half -sheet of note-paper the problem that non-arboreal man 

 settled ages ago for himself on the ground, by a familiar saying. 

 It really meets the non-scientific mind which is not weighed 

 down by what Captain Marryat used to call " top-hamper," 



