A first book in organic evolutionShute, D. Kerfoot (Daniel Kerfoot)
Science
A first book in organic evolution
Shute, D. Kerfoot (Daniel Kerfoot)
Evolution
[Illustration: PLATE XI.—Illustrating the grasping power of infants. Two
infants, ten and thirteen days old, respectively, supporting their weight
by the hands only (vestigial instinct.) Reproduced from a photograph
taken by Dr. Louis Robinson. By courtesy of the Open Court Publishing
Company.]
=Club-foot.= There is an ordinary case of malformation in the foot of a
child known as club-foot. The most common kind of this deformity is that
where the sole is turned inwards and upwards and the heel is raised.
Before birth all children pass through this condition as a perfectly
normal and natural one, and only gradually outgrow it (evolve beyond it).
But some children fail to evolve beyond this condition and have club-feet
throughout life, unless relieved by the surgeon. It is a very instructive
fact that this particular form of club-foot is the normal condition
of the adult gorilla and orang-outang. The foot of every child passes
through this gorilla phase, and if it does not develop beyond this phase
it retains the simian characters, and we call it an abnormality. In this
abnormality the anatomist finds that those bones that enter into the
formation of the ankle joint have the pronounced anatomical characters of
the adult orang-outang.
=Ribs.= Adult man possesses twelve pairs of ribs. The chimpanzee and
gorilla possess fourteen pairs. An older comparative anatomy predicted
that in an early embryonic condition man would be found to possess
thirteen or fourteen pairs. The prophecy has been verified.
=Hair.= The apes have hair over the entire body. At the sixth month
of the embryonic development the human fœtus is thickly covered with
a somewhat long, dark hair over all the body, except those parts that
are uncovered in the apes, viz.: the palms of the hands and the soles
of the feet. This covering of hair is called lanugo. Since it covers
all the body except the points noted, it extends, of course, all over
the ears, face and forehead. It is usually shed before birth. It is a
simian characteristic, and sometimes fails to disappear, but persists
and develops greatly. Therefore there are occasionally found such men
(“dog-faced men”) as the Russian Jeftichjeff. The Ainos of one of the
Japanese Islands also possess this extreme hairiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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