Concerning Animals and Other Matters | Page 6

Edward Hamilton Aitken
taken in 1902 in a flat on the Apollo Bunder, and
shows the man as he was in workaday life in Bombay. The humorous
and kindly look is, I think, well brought out, and will stir pleasant
memories in all who knew Mr. Aitken.
W. B. B.
MADRAS, January 1914.

FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The illustrations are his own work, but the blocks having
been produced in India, they do not do justice to the extreme delicacy
of workmanship and fine perception of detail which characterise the
originals, as all who have been privileged to see these will agree.]

CONCERNING ANIMALS

I
FEET AND HANDS
It is evident that, in what is called the evolution of animal forms, the

foot came in suddenly when the backboned creatures began to live on
the dry land--that is, with the frogs. How it came in is a question which
still puzzles the phylogenists, who cannot find a sure pedigree for the
frog. There it is, anyhow, and the remarkable point about it is that the
foot of a frog is not a rudimentary thing, but an authentic standard foot,
like the yard measure kept in the Tower of London, of which all other
feet are copies or adaptations. This instrument, as part of the original
outfit given to the pioneers of the brainy, backboned, and four-limbed
races, when they were sent out to multiply and replenish the earth, is
surely worth considering well. It consists essentially of a sole, or palm,
made up of small bones and of five separate digits, each with several
joints.
[Illustration: AN AUTHENTIC STANDARD FOOT.]
In the hind foot of a frog the toes are very long and webbed from point
to point. In this it differs a good deal from the toad, and there is
significance in the difference. The "heavy-gaited toad," satisfied with
sour ants, hard beetles, and such other fare as it can easily pick up, and
grown nasty in consequence, so that nothing seeks to eat it, has hobbled
through life, like a plethoric old gentleman, until the present day, on its
original feet. The more versatile and nimble-witted frog, seeking better
diet and greater security of life, went back to the element in which it
was bred, and, swimming much, became better fitted for swimming.
The soft elastic skin between the fingers or toes is just the sort of tissue
which responds most readily to inward impulses, and we find that the
very same change has come about in those birds and beasts which live
much in water. I know that this is not the accepted theory of evolution,
but I am waiting till it shall become so. We all develop in the direction
of our tendencies, and shall, I doubt not, be wise enough some day to
give animals leave to do the same.
It seems strange that any creature, furnished with such tricky and
adaptable instruments to go about the world with, should tire of them
and wish to get rid of them, but so it happened at a very early stage. It
must have been a consequence, I think, of growing too fast. Mark
Twain remarked about a dachshund that it seemed to want another pair

of legs in the middle to prevent it sagging. Now, some lizards are so
long that they cannot keep from sagging, and their progress becomes a
painful wriggle. But if you must go by wriggling, then what is the use
of legs to knock against stems and stones? So some lizards have
discarded two of their legs and some all four. Zoologically they are not
snakes, but snakes are only a further advance in the same direction.
That snakes did not start fair without legs is clear, for the python has to
this day two tell-tale leg-bones buried in its flesh.
When we pass from reptiles to birds, lo! an astounding thing has
happened. That there were flying reptiles in the fossil ages we know,
and there are flying beasts in our own. But the wings of these are
simple mechanical alterations, which the imagination of a child, or a
savage, could explain.
The hands of a bat are hands still, and, though the fingers are hampered
by their awkward gloves, the thumbs are free. The giant fruit bats of the
tropics clamber about the trees quite acrobatically with their thumbs
and feet.
That Apollyonic monster of the prime, the pterodactyl, did even better.
Stretching on each little finger a lateen sail that would have served to
waft a skiff across the Thames, it kept the rest of its hands for other
uses. But what bearing has all this on the case of birds? Here is a whole
sub-kingdom, as they call it, of the animal world which has
unreservedly and irrevocably bartered one
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