Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/265

 to suppose that no other cause save that which we are considering can ever produce hairlessness. It will be enough if we can show that the cause actually under examination does with reasonable certainty bring about such an effect.

If, then, the portion of animals which generally comes in contact with the ground or other external bodies acquires in this manner a hairless condition—shown alike in hands, feet, tail, and belly—what will be the result upon animals which are gradually acquiring the erect position? Of this we can obtain an almost complete series by looking first at the beaver, which rests upon its scaly tail alone; then at the baboons, which rest upon the naked callosities on their haunches; thirdly, at the gorilla; and, last of all, at mankind.

The gorilla, according to Professor Gervais, is the only mammal which agrees with man in having the hair thinner on the back, where it is partly rubbed off, than on the lower surface. This is a most important approach to a marked human peculiarity, and is well worthy of investigation. "I have myself come upon fresh traces of a gorilla's bed on several occasions," says Du Chaillu, "and could see that the male had seated himself with his back against a tree-trunk. In fact, on the back of the male gorilla there is generally a patch on which the hair is worn thin from this position, while the nest-building Troglodytes calvus, or bald-headed nshiego, which constantly sleeps under its leafy shelter on a tree-branch, has this bare place on its side, and in quite a different way. . . . When I surprised a pair of gorillas," he observes elsewhere, "the male was generally sitting down on a rock or against a tree." Once more, in a third passage he writes: "In both male and female the hair is found worn off the back; but this is only found in very old females. This is occasioned, I suppose, by their resting at night against trees, at whose base they sleep." And, when we inquire into the difference between the sexes thus disclosed, we learn that the female and young generally sleep in trees, while the male places, himself in the position above described against the trunk.

The gorilla has only very partially acquired the erect position, and probably sits but little in the attitudes common to man. But if a developing anthropoid ape were to grow more and more upright in his carriage, and to lie more and more upon his back and sides, we might naturally expect that the hair upon those portions of his body would grow thinner and thinner, and that the usual characteristics of the mammalia as to dorsal and sternal pilosity would be completely reversed. This is just what has probably happened in the case of man. In proportion as he grew more erect, he must have lain less and less upon his stomach, and more and more upon his back or sides. For fully developed man, with the peculiar set of his neck, face, and limbs, it is almost impossible to rest upon his stomach. On the other hand, all savage races lie far more upon their backs than even Europeans with their sofas, couches, and easy-chairs; for the natural