The Descent of Man

times possess the arrangement of tendons of
thumb and fingers characteristic of the macaque;
but whether such a case should be regarded
as a macaque passing upwards into a
man, or a man passing downwards into a macaque,
or as a congenital freak of nature, I cannot
undertake to say." It is satisfactory to hear
so capable an anatomist, and so embittered an
opponent of evolutionism, admitting even the
possibility of either of his first propositions.
Prof. Macalister has also described ('Proceedings
Royal Irish Academy,' vol. x. 1864, p. 138)
variations in the flexor pollicis longus, remarkable
from their relations to the same muscle in
the Quadrumana.)
That this unknown factor is reversion to a former
state of existence may be admitted as in the
highest degree probable. (54. Since the first edition
of this book appeared, Mr. Wood has published
another memoir in the Philosophical
Transactions, 1870, p. 83, on the varieties of the