the races that piled together the Danish "kitchen middens" lived on the shores of the Baltic and German Oceans, they were very much such savages as the present inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, and lived after the same fashion. Like the Fuegians, they were probably divided into small clans, each of a few families, and these, from conflicting interests and other causes, would be constantly at war. The earlier paleolithic savages, living in caves and rock shelters, would be even more isolated and uncompromising in their treatment of strangers, for the game of any given district would only be sufficient to support a few. If in our day

Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other, mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations,

in the time of paleolithic and early neolithic man every district the size of an English parish would be the huuting-ground of a clan, with fierce enemies on every side. In such a state of affairs a stranger (unless he were safely tied to a stake) would be a most undesirable person in proximity to the wigwam and the pickaninnies.

If he paid a call it would very likely be -in the scarcity of other game-with the purpose of carrying off a tender foe for table use. Under such circumstances the child who ran to its mother, or fled into the dark recesses of the cave, upon first spying an intruder, would be more likely to survive than another of a more confiding disposition. Often, during the absence of the men on a hunting expedition, a raid would be made, and all the women and children that could be caught carried away or killed. The returning warriors would find their homes desolate, and only those members of their families surviving who, by chance or their own action, had escaped the eyes of the spoilers. On the approach of an enemy-and "stranger" and "

enemy" would be synonymous-the child which first ran or crawled to its mother, so that she could catch it up and dash out of the wigwam and seek the cover of the woods, might be the only one of all the family to survive and leave offspring. Naturally the instinct which caused the child to turn from the stranger to the mother would be perpetuated; and from the frequency of the habit at the present day it seems probable that many of our ancestors were so saved from destruction. We must remember that the NEW SERIES-VOL LIV., No. 6.

state of society in which such occurrences would be frequent lasted many thousand years, and that probably scarcely a generation was exempt from this particular and unpleasant form of influence.

When we bear in mind that the play of young animals is almost always mimic war, it is well worthy of note how very early young children will take to the game of hide and seek." I have seen a child of a year old who, with scarcely any teaching, would hide behind the curtains and pretend to be in great alarm when discovered. Probably the readiness with which infants play at "bo-peep," and peer round the edge of a cradle curtain, and then suddenly draw back into hiding, is traceable to a much earlier ancestor. Here we see the remains of a habit common to nearly all arboreal animals, and the cradle curtain, or chair, or what not, is merely a substitute for a part of the trunk of a tree behind which the body is supposed to be bidden, while the eyes, and as little else as possible, are exposed for a moment to scrutinize a possible enemy and then quickly withdrawn.

It is remarkable how quickly very young children notice and learn to distinguish different domestic animals. I have known several cases in which an infant under a year old, which could not talk at all, has recognized and imitated the cries of sheep, cows, dogs, and cats, and evidently knew a horse from an ox. Not unfrequently I have heard great surprise expressed by parents at the quickness with which a baby would perceive some animal a long distance off, or when from other causes it was so inconspicuous as to escape the eyes of older persons. Pictures of animals, too, have a great fascination, and the child is never tired of hearing its playmate roar like a lion or bray like an ass when looking at them in the picture book. This may seem of trivial import; but it is worth while to remember that the baby's forefathers for several thousand generations depended upon their knowledge of the forms and ways of wild beasts in order to escape destruction, either from starvation or from being overcome and devoured in contests with them; and that any and every individual who was a dunce at this kind of learning was in a short time eliminated. Hence an aptness to notice and gain a knowledge of different animals was essential to those who wished to sur54

vive, and a faculty so necessary, and so constantly operative through long ages, would be likely to leave traces in after generations.

Among all arboreal apes the ability firmly to hold on to the branches is of course extremely important, and in consequence they have developed a strong power of grip in the hands. The late Frank Buckland compares the hands of an anthropoid ape to grapnels, from their evident adaptation to this end. Nor does this power exist only among adults, for although most apes, when at rest, nurse their young on one arm, just as does a mother of our own species, when, as often happens, they are fleeing from an enemy, such as a leopard or some other treeclimbing carnivorous animal, the mother would need all her hands to pass from branch to branch with sufficient celerity to escape. Under such circumstances the infant ape must cling on to its mother as best it can; and naturalists who have repeatedly seen a troop of monkeys in full flight state that the young ones as a rule hang beneath the necks and breasts of the mothers, holding on by the long hair of their shoulders and sides. This was the case with a young Rhesus monkey born in the Zoological Gardens. Wallace, in his Malay Archipelago, gives an account of a very young orang which he secured after shooting the mother. He states that the baby orang was in most points as helpless as a human infant, and lay on its back, quite unable to sit upright. It had, however, an extraordinary power of grip, and when it had once secured a hold of his beard he was not able to free himself without help. On his taking it home to his house in Sarawak he found that it was very unhappy unless it could seize and hold on to something, and would lie on its back and sprawl about with its limbs until this could be accomplished. He first gave it some bars of wood to hold on to, but finding it preferred something hairy he rolled up a buffalo skin, and for a while the little creature was content to cling to this, until, by trying to make it perform other maternal duties and fill an empty stomach, the poor orphan mias nearly choked itself with mouthfuls of hair and had to be deprived of its comforter. The whole story of this poor litle ape is both amusing and pathetic, as well as instructive, and I cannot do better

than refer those not already acquainted with it to the book, which is as a whole as good an introduction for the young student to the science of evolution as could well be found.

This power to hold on to the parent in any emergency may be compared to the galloping power of the young foal and the instinct of concealment in the calf; it is the one chief means of self-preservation adopted by the young of the arboreal quadrumana. During long epochs, impossible to measure by years, it would constantly be exercised; and it is plain that every infant ape that failed to exercise it, or which was physically unable from any cause to cling to its mother, when pursued by an agile foe, would either fall to the ground or be devoured among the branches. When we consider the harassed and precarious life of all wild creatures and the number of their enemies, it becomes apparent that scarcely an individual would be exempt from being many times put to the test, and the habit would, by the survival of those only which were able to maintain their grip, become more and more confirmed, until it became an integral part of the nature of all quadıumana and their descendants.

This being so, it occurred to me to investigate the powers of grip in young infants; for if no such power were present, or if the grasp of the hands proved only to be equally proportionate to any other exhibition of muscular strength in those feeble folk, it would either indicate that our connection with quadrumana was of the slightest and most remote description, or that man had some other origin than the Darwinian philosophy maintains.

In The Luck of Roaring Camp every one will remember the expression of one of Bret Harte's mining ruffians after he had passed through the shanty containing the newly born "Luck" and the corpse of the wretched mother. "He wrastled with my finger," said Mr. Kentuck, regarding that member with curiosity, and characteristically adding some adjectives more emphatic than to the point. On reading the story aloud in company several years ago a discussion arose as to whether the novelist was as correct an observer of infant human nature as he doubtless was of the vagaries of the pious cutthroats and chaste courtesans of the Pacific slope in the golden days of '49, and con

a creature as

siderable doubt was thrown on the statement of Mr. Kentuck, since it did not seem probable that so gelatinous and flabby a new-born babe could "wrastle" (and prevail) even with a finger. Subsequent observation proved that the novelist here did not go beyond Nature's warrant, and that, whatever doubts we may have of the disinterestedness of Mr. Oakhurst, or the constancy of "Miggles," "The Luck" was drawn true to type.

Finding myself placed in a position in which material was abundant, and available for reasonable experiment, I commenced a series of systematic observations with the purpose of finding out what proportion of young infants had a noticeable power of grip, and what was the extent of the power. I have now records of upward of sixty cases in which the children were under a month old, and in at least half of these the experiment was tried within an hour of birth. The results as given below are, as I have already indicated, both curious and unexpected.

In every instance, with only two exceptions, the child was able to hang on to the finger or a sinall stick three-quarters of an inch in diameter by its hands, like an acrobat from a horizontal bar, and sustain the whole weight of its body for at least ten seconds. In twelve cases, in infants under an hour old, half a minute passed before the grasp relaxed, and in three or four nearly a minute. When about four days old I found that the strength had increased, and that nearly all, when tried at this age, could sustain their weight for half a minute. At about a fortnight or three weeks after birth the faculty appeared to have attained its maximum, for several at this period succeeded in hanging for over a minute and a half, two for just over two minutes, and one infant of three weeks old for two minutes thirty-five seconds! As, however, in a well-nourished child there is usually a rapid accumulation of fat after the first fortnight, the apparently diminished strength subsequently may result partly from the increased dis proportion of the weight of the body and the muscular strength of the armis, and partly from neglect to cultivate this curious endowment. In one instance, in which the performer had less than one hour's experience of life, he hung by both hands to my forefinger for ten seconds,

and then deliberately let go with his right hand (as if to seek a better hold) and maintained his position for five seconds more by the left hand only. A curious point is, that in many cases no sign of distress is evinced, and no cry uttered, until the grasp begins to give way. In order to satisfy some sceptical friends I had a series of photographs taken of infants clinging to a finger or to a walkingstick, and these show the position adopted excellently. Invariably the thighs are bent nearly at right angles to the body, and in no case did the lower limbs hang down and take the attitude of the erect position. This attitude, and the disproportionately large development of the arms compared with the legs, give the photographs a striking resemblance to a wellknown picture of the celebrated chimpanzee "Sally" at the Zoological Gardens. Of this flexed position of the thighs, so characteristic of young babies, and of the small size of the lower extremities as compared with the upper, I must speak further later on; for it appears to me that the explanation hitherto given by physiologists of these peculiarities is not altogether satisfactory.

I think it will be acknowledged that the remarkable strength shown in the flexor muscles of the fore-arm in these young infants, especially when compared with the flaccid and feeble state of the muscular system generally, is a sufficiently striking phenomenon to provoke inquiry as to its cause and origin. The fact that a three-weeks-old baby can perform a feat of muscular strength that would tax the powers of many a healthy adult-if any of my readers doubt this let them try hanging by their hands from a horizontal bar for three minutes-is enough to sct one wondering.

So noteworthy and so exceptional a measure of strength in this set of muscles, and at the same time one so constantly present in all individuals, must either be of some great utility now, or must in the past have proved of material aid in the battle for existence. Now it is evident that to human infants this gift of grip is of no use at all, unless indeed they were subjected to a severe form of an old South of England custom, which ordered that the babe, when three days old, should be lightly tossed on to the slope of a newly thatched roof, that it might, by holding

on to the straw with its little hands, or by rolling helplessly back into the arms of its father, assist in forecasting its future disposition and prospects in life. Barring the successful passing of this ordeal-with regard to which I have never heard that non-success was a preliminary to immediate extinction-it seems plain that this faculty of sustaining the whole weight by the strength of the grasp of the fingers is totally unnecessary, and serves no purpose whatever in the newly born offspring of savage or civilized man. It follows therefore that, as is the case with many vestigial structures and useless habits, we must look back into the remote past to account for its initiation and subsequent confirmation; and whatever views we may hold as to man's origin, we find among the arboreal quadrumana, and among these only, a condition of affairs in which not only could the faculty have originated, but in which the need of it was imperative, since its absence meant certain and speedy death.

It is a well-known fact that the human embryo about three months before birth has a thick covering of soft hair, called "lanugo," which is shed before a separate existence is entered upon. At the same stage of development the skeleton is found to conform much more to the simian type than later, for the long bone of the arm, the humerus, is equal to the thigh bone, and the ulna is quite as long and as important as the tibia. At the time of birth the lower limbs are found to have gained considerably on the upper, but still they are nothing like so much larger as when fully grown. Physiologists have explained this want of development of the lower extremities in the foetus by attributing it to the peculiarity of the antenatal circulation, in which the head and arms are supplied with comparatively pure oxygenated blood fresh from the maternal placenta, and the lower part of the trunk and legs get the venous vitiated blood returned through the great veins and transferred via the right ventricle and the ductus arteriosus to the descending aorta. This, it is said, accounts for the more rapid growth and more complete development of the head and arms before birth. To assert the exact contrary would be to contradict several great authorities, and apparently to follow the lead of the pious sage who admired the wisdom and good

ness of Providence in causing large rivers to flow by great cities. Nevertheless it is well to remember that just as the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, so the blood-vessels were made for the body and not the body for the blood-vessels. It appears to me much more true to say that the quick arterial blood is sent to the upper extremities because these parts are for the time being more important, and their growth and development essential to the welfare of the individual, than that they are coerced into a kind of temporary hypertrophy, nolens volens, through having a better blood supply arbitrarily sent them than is allotted to their nether fellow-members. That this view is borne out by facts can be shown by taking the example of a young animal whose hind quarters are of essential service to it from birth; and for this end we need go no further than the instance, already quoted, of the young foal. Now in the ante-natal state the foal has just the same arrangement of blood-distribution as the embryo man; yet he is born with a small light head and well-developed hind quarters, so that he can gallop with speed. Instead of coming into the world with the general outline of an American bison (as he ought to do upon accepted physiological dicta), he is, as is well known, proportionately higher at the rump and lower at the shoulder than in after life. The mention of the American bison reminds me that it is another capital illustration of the same fact; for a young buffalo calf must have speed from its earliest days to enable it to keep up with the herd on the open prairie; and, in consequence, we find that it is much better developed behind (the hind legs being the chief propellers in all galloping animals) than the full-grown bull or cow, and has none of the comma-like, whittled-off aspect of its adult parents. The massive fore end of the bull bison arises from his habit of using himself as a projectile wherewith to batter his rivals out of the overlordship of the herd; but the bison calf is almost as level-backed as the young of our domestic cattle-though it is a much more active, wideawake little beast than an ordinary calf.

Why, then, are the head and upper extremities so apparently abnormally developed in the young infant? I conceive the true reason to be something like this: For

untold ages the perfection of the arms was a sine qua non of the continuance of the race; and as man, or the thing which was to be man, took to living by his wits when, that is, mind began to take precedence of brute force and direct reflex action in the forefront of the struggle for existence-it became an absolute necessity for the being that was to live by his wits to be furnished with an abundant supply of the raw material out of which wits are made-that is, brains. Now every man, actual or in posse—having elected, be it remembered, to fight chiefly with his brains, and having renounced forever the more gross and carnal weapons, such as huge canine teeth and heavy, claw-armed limbs-would be certainly bested in the struggle, and driven out of being, if his chosen armature were not up to the mark. In other words, every incipient homo who was born with deficient mind-material lived but a short time and left no offspring. And, since the potentialities of the brain depend far more upon its primary degree of development than do, for instance, the potentialities of the muscles, only those infants which were born with crania capacious and well-furnished would attain that degree of excellence which would prevent them from being fatally plucked in Nature's great perennial competitive examination. Only those infants, then, survived and became our ancestors which had from the first a good development of head and arm, and, to insure this, Nature has provided for a suitable blood supply during the early period of growth. With regard to the forward bend of the thighs in young infants, which is constant in all cases, as any one who has the opportunity for observing can see for himself, this has been accounted for from the fact that the thighs are flexed against the abdomen during the latter part of intrauterine life. But from analogy with other young creatures, such as those already mentioned and young birds, we find that the pre-natal position has little or no in fluence in decreeing the habitual attitude of the limbs after birth, and it seems to me more logical and reasonable to trace this also to a prior state of evolutionary development.

Man is, when standing erect, the only animal that has the thigh in a line with the axis of the vertebral column, and among his nearest congeners in the an

mal world the flexed state of the femoral articulation is natural and constant. As we go down the scale the angle between the thighs and trunk diminishes, until it 1eaches the right angle characteristic of most quadrupeds. I speak here of the attitude adopted when the animal is at rest upon its legs, for during sleep there is in many cases a curious reversion to the position occupied in embryonic life. Thus we see that a bird roosting with its head "under its wing," and the legs drawn up close to the body, offers a decided resemblance to the chick in the egg.

I have noticed that young children, when old enough to shift their limbs, very seldom sleep in any but the curled-up position; and that as often as not, when unhampered by clothing or other artificial restraints, they sleep in the same attitude as do many quadrupeds, viz. with the abdomen downward and the limbs flexed beneath them. I am told that negro mothers and nurses in the West Indies invariably lay their charges down to sleep on their stomachs, and that this custom is also common in various parts of the world. Adult man is, I believe, the only animal who ever elects to sleep upon his back. Some of the lower savages seem to sleep comfortably on occasion in a crouching position with the head bent down upon the knees, just as all the common tribes of monkeys do. Among the quadrumana it is not until we come to the platform-building anthropoid types that we find a recumbent position habitually taken during sleep. The young orangs and chimpanzees that they have had at the Zoological Gardens slept with the body semi-prone and with the limbs, or all except one arm, which was used as a pillow, curled under them. This is exactly the position voluntarily adopted by 80 per cent. of children between ten and twenty months old which I have had opportunities of watching. I was told by the attendants at the Zoological Gardens that no ape will sleep flat on his back, as adult man often does.

It would be very interesting to get exact observations as to the habits of all the lower tribes men with regard to sleeping, for Doint upon which a great deal depend, if, as Tylor copologists believe, spirit world arose

that most of