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To gain this great advantage, the feet have been rendered flat; and the great toe has been peculiarly modified, though this has entailed the almost complete loss of its power of prehension.
In the first section, the animals are furnished with a disk or umbrella of varying shape, which serves as a float, beneath which hang certain processes connected with the functions of prehension and digestion. In this division are included some of the best-known forms.
Along with this growth of the brain, the complete assumption of the upright posture, enabling the hands to be devoted entirely to prehension and thus relieving the jaws of that part of their work, has coöperated in producing that peculiar contour of head and face which is the chief distinguishing mark of physical Man.
It also serves, as we have before seen, for prehension and suction, and as a tactile organ. A worm was placed on loose mould, and it buried itself in between two and three minutes. On another occasion four worms disappeared in 15 minutes between the sides of the pot and the earth, which had been moderately pressed down.
As plain and unpretending as the hollyhock; as thinly dressed as the short-kirtled daisy in a Connecticut meadow. It is wonderful, and passing wonder, how teachable and quick of perception and prehension is Nature in the studio of Art.
But the sexes often differ in what Hunter has called secondary sexual characters, which are not directly connected with the act of reproduction; for instance, the male possesses certain organs of sense or locomotion, of which the female is quite destitute, or has them more highly-developed, in order that he may readily find or reach her; or again the male has special organs of prehension for holding her securely.
Human preference, both sexual and social, would tend to eliminate huge jaws and ferocious teeth when these were no longer needed as weapons of war or organs of prehension, &c.
Sometimes it is soft and filled with pus. Tumors of long standing may possess uneven, nodular surfaces and fistulous openings. When the tongue is affected, it is swollen and painful, and prehension and mastication of the food may be impossible. When the pharynx is the seat of disease, breathing and swallowing are difficult and painful.
Things in general are so disproportionate to the child's stature, so far from his organs of prehension, so much above his horizontal line of vision, so much ampler than his immediate surroundings, that there is, between him and all these big things, a gap to be filled only by a microcosm of playthings which give him his first object-lessons.
"In comparing the several stages in the very interesting development of the cyanæa aurita to the infusoria and polypes, it must be understood that such comparisons are warranted only by a similarity of outward form, and of the instruments of locomotion and prehension.
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