The Topeka state journal., 1913-05-24
ABOUT FINGERS AND TOES.
Why They Number Ten-How We Are
to Use Them.

Do you know why all your fingers
are not the same length, why you
were born with finger nails, and why
YOU are a much better language stud
ent if you are right handed than if you
are left handed? An English phySi-
ologist has given us an interesting SER
les of answers to the above everyday
questions.
THE fact that all our fingers are not
the same length has always been dis
advantage to u.s." he says. And the
reason that our little fingers and our
ring fingers are so small and weak
might be difficult to account for If we
took into consideration the present use
of the hand. But we can find good
reasons when we consider the history
of the hand and look at the fingers of
many kinds of the lower animals which
have fingers more or less like ours"
Our hands, he goes on to explain, were
probably used for standing and walk
ing, as we seem to inherit them from
our 'four-footed ancestors" Surely
we We're never given them in the first
place, since our grasp of things is so
materially lessened by our inequality.
But if we put our hands on table as
if we meant to walk on the tips of the
fingers we can Immediately see what a
we'll balanced support it makeS-with
the middle finger the longest and the
little finger and the thumb falling be-
hind and balancing the whole.
We see the same thing at the zoolog-
ical gardens in the case of the animals
that have three fingers, as the toes
of the fore feet might rightly be called,
and we can notice it any day in the
case of the dog or the cat. This is only
one instance of a large number of cases
furnished by our bodies which help us
to understand why certain things, for
which there seems no particular reason
and which may. even seem inconvenient
to us, are as they are.
Again, the only possible use for finger
nails is to scratch with, an action
which is more or less dispensed with
in modern society, and that brings up
the question as to why we have ten
fingers and toes instead of perhaps nine.
Mature" this same Psychologist says,
decided on five fingers for each hand
long, long ago, indeed. ages before man
ever appeared on this earth at all. 1t
does seem at first as though there were
some obvious exceptions to this, for
we find only one finger or toe for each
limb in the horse, two for the pig, and
so on. But the original figure was five.
THE hen, for instance, has only three
and a half toes, and when we examine
the skeleton of its wing, which is really
its arm, we find three and a half fing-
ers there. With the chicken it is the
same. Only the birds apparently have
found that they could do as well with
three and a part of a fourth and so
have stopped developing For it is the
case with man and animals the world
over and through countless generations
as soon as they discover that they can
do without a particular part of their
anatomy they begin to dispense with
it and finally lose it altogether
Again, we are given some interesting
data on the fad that was much in vogue
some 10 years ago and which has now
died down to a certain extent, and that
is the one that the children should be
taught to use both hands equally WELL
The successes were few, and the results
in the long run seemed to be that the
children who used only one hand got
along better in their intellectual studies,
and especially in the pursuit of Ian
guages, than those who were so dexter
Gus in the use of their two hands equal
ly we'll.