In the products of Nature there are no freaks, or impish tricks performed, and it is not for nothing she does her work. Every one of them asks for and should receive an explanation consistent with fact and reason, and here comes in the need for studying, as one may, the broad outlines of man’s ancestry. His ancestor being now sought in an earlier and more generalized stock than that of the four genera of anthropoid apes known to us, the most instructive and safest line to take is to trace him back to the stock lemur, who remains to-day among the most Chinese or unchanging of known mammals. In his illuminating work, _Prehistoric Man and History_, Professor Scott Elliott adopts an excellent term, “lemur-monkey-man,” to sum up, without missing links, the long ancestry of man. I take the liberty of adapting this term more closely to the present inquiry and use that of _lemur-ape-man_ instead, for whatever may be the relation of man to present apes some ape-like ancestors enter into his genealogical tree.[45] For my purpose the monkey is less useful because his hair-slope differs so little from that of lemurs, whereas apes have made for themselves a very remarkable position as regards the hair of their forearms. Our series of animals for study is then well represented by the lemur-ape-man--hypothetical, necessary and serviceable. Through all the immense stretch of time occupied in this process of descent there has been ample opportunity for the lemur to change his fashion to that of the ape, and the latter to change to the present fashion of man. [45] This was written before the publication of Professor Woods-Jones’ book _Arboreal Man_. This simple arrangement of the lemur’s hair is common to that of all the more primitive long-bodied mammals, of which an otter is a good example, and I venture, greatly daring, to call this the normal slope of hair. Somewhere and somehow in the human tree there has appeared a total reversal of the lemur-type; the stock of apes acquired a new fashion, and gradually discarded altogether their ancient inheritance, beginning their innovation perhaps, with _Dryopithecus fontani_ in the Miocene Age. The Dynamics of Hair-Pattern.