The Descent of Man

esult: but sailors chiefly use their arms in pulling,
and not in supporting weights. With sailors,
the girth of the neck and the depth of the
instep are greater, whilst the circumference of
the chest, waist, and hips is less, than in soldiers.
Whether the several foregoing modifications
would become hereditary, if the same habits of
life were followed during many generations, is
not known, but it is probable. Rengger (23.
'Saugethiere von Paraguay,' 1830, s. 4.) attributes
the thin legs and thick arms of the Payaguas
Indians to successive generations having
passed nearly their whole lives in canoes, with
their lower extremities motionless. Other writers
have come to a similar conclusion in analogous
cases. According to Cranz (24. 'History of
Greenland,' Eng. translat., 1767, vol. i. p. 230.),
who lived for a long time with the Esquimaux,
"the natives believe that ingenuity and dexterity
in seal-catching (their highest art and virtue)