1004. Man's Place in Nature. | October, 
greatest number of parts, not upon the great development of one 
part at the expense of others. 
In so far as the cow, pig or horse have lost digits, they Samal 
degenerated ; in so far as the remaining digits are more perfect 
than those of the primitive ungulates, they have advanced. As 
a whole they have departed from the main stem of mammalian 
life; by the completeness of their specialization they have sacri- 
ficed all adaptability to other lines of life, and must therefore be 
pronounced to be, by their very specialization, inferior to animals 
which have retained their five digits, put them to new and varied 
uses, and developed them all towards perfection. The hand of 
the gibbon, though but a poor instrument compared with that of 
man, is incomparably superior to the one-toed limb of the horse, 
for it can be used to walk, to grasp, to pick up objects that are 
needed, to bring food to the mouth; while the one toe of t 
horse, MPA though it is for progress upon hard ground, is for 
other purposes useless. If this one-toed limb, reached by com- 
plete disuse of the other digits, and resulting in. incapacity 
employment for more than one purpose, is higher than the fiver 
fingered member which we have inherited from our hypothetical 
simian ancestor, then, by a similar line of argument, is the natu- 
ralist who is Droogh acquainted with the genus Scarabæus, 0t 
the forms of Foraminifera, superior to a Cuvier, a Lamarck oF 
Darwin. 
Completion is one thing, advance another. The horse sands 
near, probably at, the end of its line. Farther reduction of digits 
would entail the loss of limbs, and advance in the direction’ 
brain is precluded by the want of an instrument sufficiently ge 
eralized and mobile to do the brain’s bidding. Let those 
maintain that man has not the highest type of limb because: 
has carried to their fullest perfection the normal mammalian com- 
plement of five digits, try to write their arguments with a z 
dle finger only. 
In the same way the folded teeth of the ungulates, though ut 
questionably more perfect teeth than the simple tubercul 
the powers of nutrition, but of a narrowing of those pe 
a special class of bodia limitation which of itself precl 
advance in other directions, 
