86 
PRIMROSE ; THE ANATOMY OF THE ORANG OUTANG 
of the foot. The consequence is that the hallux is not only separated 
from the other digits, but it is also set in a different plane, so that when it 
is flexed it turns towards the sole of the foot and becomes opposed to 
the others much as the thumb does in the hand. Flower (and others, 
e.g., Pick) remarks that the terminal phalanx of the hallux is often 
wanting. Pick attributes this to ill-usage. Flower points out that the 
proportions of the three segments of the foot in the anthropoid ape are 
the exact reverse of those in man. In the ape the tarsal segment is the 
shortest and the phalangeal the longest ; the reverse is true of man. 
The result of our study is to bring us to the conclusion that whether 
we study the extremities of man or of the Orang we find corresponding 
structures in the upper extremity as compared with the lower. A 
common type of origin is clearly indicated. This is the more readily 
observed in the ape than in man where the highest degree of specializa- 
tion of function has been reached. As a result of this we find greater 
differences exist between the human hand and the human foot, than 
between the hand and the foot of the ape. Moreover, in man there is a 
greater departure from the common type of origin in both hand and foot. 
Bischoff has investigated the subject of homologies, and although his 
conclusions differ in some details from the views expressed in this paper, 
he agrees in the main and establishes homologies for the hand and foot 
of man as in the hand and foot of apes. He further admits that certain 
correspondences exist between the foot of the ape and the foot of 
man. Following Bischoff’s argument to a logical conclusion (as Pick 
observed^) we would be forced to conclude that man, like the ape, had four 
arms and four hands. Bischoff, however, views the matter not wholly 
from the morphological side, but from the physiological, and, looking 
upon the ape’s foot as a grasping organ, he considers this strong 
evidence for the assertion that it is a hand. He admits that this alone 
is not sufficient evidence ; on similar ground he says one might call the 
trunk of an elephant a hand, but there are obviously other similarities in 
the ape’s foot to a hand, chiefly the short, movable, opposable hallux, 
differing from the first digit of the human foot, possessing the saddle 
joint with the internal cuneiform and thus resembling the human thumb. 
Whilst one cannot longer uphold in its entirety Huxley’s assertion 
regarding the absolute anatomical differences in distinguishing the foot 
of man from his hand (see page 75), yet in the skeletal parts his argu- 
ment regarding the arrangement of the tarsal bones is unanswerable and 
we are forced to conclude with him that the so-called hind hand of the 
ape is essentially a foot. The method of articulation of the foot with 
I Loc. dt. I, p. S3. 
