The modification of man's upper limbs for the endless variety, nicety,
and perfection of their application, in fulfillment of the behests of
his correspondingly developed brain--actions summed up in the term
"manipulation"--testify as strongly to the same conclusion. The
corresponding degree of modification of the human lower limbs, to which
he owes his upright attitude, relieving the manual instruments from all
share in station and terrestrial locomotion--combine and concur in
raising the group so characterized above and beyond the apes, to, at
least, ordinal distinction. The dental characters of mankind bear like
testimony. The lowest (Melanian), like the highest (Caucasian), variety
of the bimanal order differs from the quadrumanal one in the order of
appearance, and succession to the first set of teeth, of the second or
"permanent" set. The foremost incisor and foremost molar are the
earliest to appear in that scries; the intermediate teeth are acquired
sooner than those behind the foremost molar.[4]
[Footnote 4: "Odontography," 4to, 1840-44, p. 454, plates 117,
118, 119.]
In the gorilla and chimpanzee, the rate or course of progress is
reversed; the second true molar, or the one behind the first, makes its
appearance before the bicuspid molars rise in front of the first; and
the third or last of the molars behind the first comes into place before
the canine tooth has risen.
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