The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-10-10


Arabs using their toes in making lace
work. braids and edging.
A recent notable example OF the devel-
opment is that of the young woman now
famous in London for the beautiful and
very faithful busts and other works of
the mOdelers art she has executed with
her feet. Being armless, she depends
mainly on the dehcacy of touch and ac-
curacy of movement in the great toe
There is now living on the East Side of
New York a man who lost both arms at
the elbow while quite young, but who has
for years supported himself by penmar-
ship of a high order of merit, such as en-
crossing diplomas and filling out certl-
ficates. The sandals worn 10y Hlndoos IL
lustrate well how instructive is the grasp
ing power of the great toe among men,
They are usually made of hard wood
deliberately engraved and provided with
an ivory button, which, coming between
the great and second toe, and having a
cap which bears upon the top of these
toes, is the sole means of retaining the
sandal i'm place. Yet with this seemingly
insecure footwear the Hindoo manages to
get about quite rapidly.
These examples show how readily a lost
or disused power may be recalled into
usefulness. On the other hand. those Chi
nese women who retard the development
of the foot until it is dwarfed and afro
phied beyond the possibility of use, IL
lustrate how easy it is to lose such pow
ers. If the bandaging of the feet is kept
up vigorously for two years, some of the
flesh viii have sloughed away, perhaps
even one or two toes will have fallen off.
and the whole leg from the knee down
will have become little more than the
mere bones covered with skin. The foot
is practically dead and incapable of pain;
and if the bandaging began early enough,
int eli, incl NKyila nv
three inches long. There Is no POSSIBLE
ity of ever agaisa developing the muscu-
lar system of a foot so abused.
These examples of her quick recovery
Of atroDhied muscular power or Of the
rapid destruction Of such power, must not
be taken as a proof that the transition
from four-handed monkeys to bipedal apes
or to primitive man, can have been a
rapid one The requirement Of a charac-
ter in an individual by education may be
the work of but a few years; in a race
by inheritance, the product of many te-
dious ages. The deft-toed maker of busts
will bear children like those of women
around her. with no perceptible popularity
in the feet, as will also the Chinese mother
who is herself unable to walk unaided.
Further than this it must not be forgot
ten that while man in either an aboriginal
state or under the education of stern ne
cessity shows a certain degree of the pow
er has been so disuSed in its fitness that
the bony structure of his feet Is now such
that at best he can only exert a pinching
power with the great toe against it's neigh
Dor. That toe is no longer placed so aS
to be in opposition to the bulk of the foot
and capable of the same sort of grasping
as is the thumb But much as the man
like apes differ from man in this and
other particulars, it is plain to the con-
scientious anatomist that they differ still
foa fr4a. hal Il
The gorilla, chimpanzee. orangoutang,
gibbon and their near allies are to-day
classed with man in the bimana two
handed and not with the spider mon-
keys, capuchins, cebuses and their rela-
tives, in the quGdrumana four-handed)
mammals, which amply illustrates how
important a factor in the classification of
the animal world is the decline and fall
of the great toe and the changes allied
thereto.