while in the more advanced Caucasic races they are cut only in later life or not at all.  The reduced vermiform appendix of man, a source of much ill health, is another structure that is a counterpart of a relatively larger and useful part of the digestive tract in the lower primates and other animals.  Furthermore, the human tail is a reality, not a fiction.  Now and then an individual is born with a tail that may reach a length in later life of eight or ten inches; such structures are, of course, abnormal.  But in every normal human being there is a series of little bones at the lower end of the vertebral column, constituting the coccyx, and this is just where the abbreviated tail of the ape and the still longer prehensile tail of the monkey arises from the body.  Unless the coccyx is a tail, what can it be?  And if it does not represent a reduced counterpart of the tails of other mammals, what does it represent?

Many of the vestigial structures of man appear more clearly in infancy and in embryonic development.  The human embryo possesses a complete coat of hair, called the lanugo, which usually disappears before birth.  This hair cannot be regarded as any less significant than the coat of hair which the infant whale possesses; it means a completely haired ancestor.  The elements of this coat are arranged precisely as they are in the apes; upon the arm, for example, they point from shoulder to elbow and from wrist to elbow.  Unless the anterior limb of the hairy human ancestor was held in the position of the climbing ape’s, this arrangement would be disadvantageous, for the hair as a rain-shedding thatch would be effective only upon the upper arm, while the hairs upon the forearm would catch the rain.  In a word, this vestigial coat indicates in the clearest possible manner that the ancestor of the human species was not only hairy, but also arboreal in its mode of life.

Every human infant is bow-legged at birth, and the natural position of its curved limbs is like that of the gorilla’s, for the soles of the feet are turned toward one another.  Again, the so-called great toe is at first shorter than the others, and for a time it retains the power of free movement that indicates a handlike character of the lower limb in the ancestor.  Many savage human races, however, whose feet remain unshod, make use of the primitive grasping power of the foot which the higher races lose completely.  An Australian and Polynesian can pick up small objects with the foot very much as we may with the hand.

Among the wonderful reminiscent characters displayed by the human infant is the firm clasping power of the hand, which it possesses for a time after birth and which enables it to hang suspended for several minutes from a stick placed in its grasp.  The muscles which enable the infant to do this gradually dwindle, so that the two-year-old child can hang suspended for only a few seconds.  This grasping muscle is a heritage from the ape, where there is an obvious necessity for the newborn individual to have a firm hold upon the hairy coat of its tree-climbing mother.  When the newborn child hangs in this way, it bends its curved lower limbs so that the soles of the feet are turned toward one another, thus increasing its resemblance to the ape.