88 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



man possess ? Aside from those mentioned and the 

 quadrumana, hardly any. It would cause suffering 

 and incapacity to quadrumana if they possessed a 

 developed sense of touch in their finger tips and 

 thumbs. For these, in their case, touch the ground 

 or the tree in locomotion. Not delicate skin, cover- 

 ing a fine net -work of specialized sensitive nerves, 

 is needed here; but, on the contrary 7 , tough, thick 

 skin, callosities, and nails to protect against cuts, 

 scratches, etc. Natural selection, therefore, seems 

 to have eliminated in these four-handed creatures 

 whatever acuteness the sense of touch may have 

 formerly possessed. 



Other sub-human mammalia can hardly be sup- 

 posed to possess any sense of touch worth mention- 

 ing. Their thickly calloused toes, armed with long, 

 sharp nails, etc., cannot be supposed to supply sen- 

 sations indicating the qualities of things they come 

 in contact with, more definitely than we experience 

 when in a certain social game we are blindfolded 

 and made to examine the faces of persons by means 

 of a long-handled spoon held in the hand. 



Some of the anthropoids and quadrumana can 

 stand erect, but it is not a natural or comfortable 

 position for them. Most birds naturally have an 

 erect posture, but only rudimentary sense of touch. 



Cats, rats, mice, many snails and insects, and some 

 other animals have long hairlike processes on their 

 faces, popularly supposed to be organs of touch, 

 called feelers. They can, however, serve no such 



