be better calculated to soften and moisten the skin over his palms and soles or expose it less to stimuli of friction, while even those of pressure in his tenacious grasp of boughs are decidedly intermittent. Unless one may assume the appearance in the distant past of some unit-character of soft, moist skin in this and other Primates, it seems difficult to refuse the Lamarckian claim of long, long absence of effectual stimuli of friction and equally long presence of enervating “negative” conditions. Proof of such a view is, of course, wanting. Palm and Sole of Man. The palm of man’s hand is a miracle of adaptations for touch and grasping, but has lost most of the coarse structure formed in response to stimuli of pressure and friction which we saw were common in lower mammals. This indeed he shares with most simian forms. The skin of our hands is now very much what we make it and responds very soon to fresh positive or passive conditions. The horny, cracked epidermis on palm and digit of the old sailor may be contrasted with the soft and flexible and pale surface of his twin-brother, the bank clerk, who is of studious habits and has neither the vice of gardening nor golf. If one compares the hand of the ordinary maid with that of her mistress the difference is striking. But if one compares the hand of that mistress with that of her spinster sister who has lain for twenty years in bed or on a couch, the difference is equally significant. Indeed the sofa-and-bed-ridden invalid, of whom I knew a few once, but who have gone out of fashion, gives the observer some useful thoughts as to the why and wherefore of the strange skin of the hands of the _slow loris_ previously referred to. And if he be disposed also to the pleasant pursuit of moralizing at the expense of others he will feel led to reflect over harshly on the invalid and compare her outlook on life with that of the _loris_. Even in this concrete case of the hand of an invalid there may be evidence of positive as well as negative response, if one examines the right forefinger so much used in sewing, where the skin becomes hard and thick.