Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/702

682 experience of life, he hung by both hands to my forefinger for ten seconds, and then deliberately let go with his right hand (as if to seek a better hold) and maintained his position for five seconds more by the left hand only. A curious point is, that in many cases no sign of distress is evinced, and no cry uttered, until the grasp begins to give way. In order to satisfy some skeptical friends I had a series of photographs taken of infants clinging to a finger or to a walking-stick, and these show the position adopted excellently. Invariably the thighs are bent nearly at right angles to the body, and in no case did the lower limbs hang down and take the attitude of the erect position. This attitude and the disproportionately large development of the arms compared with the legs, give the photographs a striking resemblance to a well-known picture of the celebrated chimpanzee "Sally" at the Zoölogical Gardens. Of this flexed position of the thighs, so characteristic of young babies, and of the small size of the lower extremities as compared with the upper, I must speak further later on; for it appears to me that the explanation hitherto given by physiologists of these peculiarities is not altogether satisfactory.

I think it will be acknowledged that the remarkable strength shown in the flexor muscles of the forearm in these young infants, especially when compared with the flaccid and feeble state of the muscular system generally, is a sufficiently striking phenomenon to provoke inquiry as to its cause and origin. The fact that a three-weeks-old baby can perform a feat of muscular strength that would tax the powers of many a healthy adult—if any of my readers doubt this let them try hanging by their hands from a horizontal bar for three minutes—is enough to set one wondering.

So noteworthy and so exceptional a measure of strength in this set of muscles, and at the same time one so constantly present in all individuals, must either be of some great utility now, or must in the past have proved of material aid in the battle for existence. Now it is evident that to human infants this gift of grip is of no use at all, unless indeed they were subjected to a severe form of an old south of England custom, which ordered that the babe, when three days old, should be lightly tossed on to the slope of a newly thatched roof, that it might, by holding on to the straw with its little hands, or by rolling helplessly back into the arms of its father, assist in forecasting its future disposition and prospects in life. Barring the successful passing of this ordeal—with regard to which I have never heard that non-success was a preliminary to immediate extinction—it seems plain that this faculty of sustaining the whole weight by the strength of the grasp of the fingers is totally unnecessary, and serves no purpose whatever in the newly born offspring of savage or