our nearer kinsfolk, the gibbons, progressing by long leaps and armswings among the branches, he must have been struck by the strange power that such creatures show of accurately calculating distance and adjusting their muscles to the practical solution of complex physical problems. Here accuracy in getting a 'right answer' is a matter of life or death. In such locomotion the nervous processes involved can only be described as a succession of distinct mental efforts, and are not rhythmically mechanical, like those regulating the running of a quadruped. For, unlike progression on level ground, a scamper among the tree-tops affords no two successive movements of a like nature. The muscular combinations requisite for each leap, together with the force required, must be arranged for and estimated beforehand according to the ever-changing distances and angles of the branches. No doubt all this is an unconscious process; and it must be acknowledged that the same faculties seem to be shown, in a measure, by most of the lower animals. Still, I do not see how we can escape from the conclusion that it involves calculation, although the brain cells work their mathematical problems as unconsciously as a healthy man's stomach performs the surprising chemical feat of digesting his dinner. Should the conscious, introspective mind which is a characteristic of man-and more especially of civilised man-learn to dive down among the psychic machinery which controls such automatic mental processes, and find a way of partially expressing what goes on there by means of numbers (as artificial words partially express our unworded thoughts), may we not here have the basis of that wondrous mathematical aptitude which in civilised times has blazed forth in man's mental firmament as suddenly as a meteor in a dark sky, and which has proved such a dazzling mystery to Wallace and other students of mental evolution? Before leaving this curious and interesting hypothesis let me call attention to two kindred facts which seem to give it some justification. Nearly all the mathematical prodigies who crop up from time to time acknowledge that certain of their most difficult arithmetical feats, especially those performed during their earlier years, are achieved subconsciously, so that they have found themselves puzzled to explain how the results were obtained. At the other end of the scale are low-grade savages who cannot count half a dozen, but who undoubtedly have certain mysterious ways of their own for correctly estimating numbers, distances, &c., which must involve some kind of mental calculation.

Certain other conditions of arboreal life can, without so much danger of controversy, be linked up with our human characteristics. While safe from his enemies high up in the trees there was no need for our remote ancestor to develop large olfactory nerves in order to detect the approach of dangerous neighbours. Hence, throughout the Primates, these nerves bear no comparison with such as are found in quadrupeds whose habitat has always been upon the ground. Sight

and hearing, though much more important, did not need to be so acute as among such creatures as the deer or the fox. This deficiency in certain of the sense organs must have had an enormous influence on mental development when man took to living on the ground and became a hunter. It was a most fortunate deprivation; for, not being able to trail and kill like a hound, he was obliged to depend on his brain and versatile hands in following and capturing his quarry, as well as in protecting himself against enemies. Hence in every hunt in which he became engaged he was exercising and sharpening his nascent reasoning faculties; for although we usually speak with contempt of the mental powers of the desert Bushman and the Australian black, the arts in which these primitive savages proverbially excel, those of tracking and snaring game, involve, if rightly understood, a keen exercise of the powers of observation, coupled with elaborate reasoning processes in which data of ever-varying value have to be continually taken into account.

The success of the early hunter probably depended much more upon such intellectual feats as these than upon mere bodily prowess. Throughout the immeasurable Stone Ages, man, like all modern savages who live by the chase, was continually in peril of death from hunger. When game was scarce and shy those successful in hunting, that is to say in exercising their reasoning faculties, survived and fed their hungry families; while those (and there must have been many) who had not brains enough to find quarry and track it down, were eliminated, and their race became extinct.

There can be no doubt whatever that man owes a great deal of that physical helplessness which has compelled him to resort to art in the manufacture of dwellings, clothes, and weapons, to his association with the trees where his pristine forefathers sought safety.

Had he been clothed by Nature as perfectly as are the birds, he would never have attained his present civilised state. Moreover, if flight, which is now one of his most ardent ambitions, had been granted to him at an early period, food and safety would have been easily within his reach without the continual exercise of reason; and, moreover, he would never have acquired his unrivalled hands.

It has only been possible, in a short and popular sketch such as this, to point out a very few of the main factors which have contributed in bringing us to our present estate since the beginning of life upon the Earth. But everyone who thinks about the matter, with the necessary information at his disposal—and in all probability many of the readers of this article have a much more extensive and accurate knowledge of physics, astronomy, and geology than the present writer-would be able to bring forward numerous other instances where conditions peculiar to this planet have directed the upward march of that thin procession of living creatures which has culminated in man.

If every one of these physical conditions had been repeated on some other orb in the universe, and had the self-same chain of meteorological events, with all its myriad links, reacted on such living organisms as might there have sprung into being, even then the odds would remain incalculably great against the evolution of man. Vastly more impor tant than the nature of the outward pressure in such a problem is the nature of the matter acted upon. Among sensitive and shifty living things the possibilities of variation are infinitely great, and the chances of the same results being obtained twice over after millions of evolu tionary changes are infinitesimally small. Hence we may say with confidence that, whatever intelligent beings may exist elsewhere in the universe, they are totally different from humankind.

LOUIS ROBINSON.

FRESH LIGHT ON COKE OF NORFOLK

To recall to mankind a name which has lapsed into partial oblivion is much like making an appeal to the dormant memory of age. At first, in answer to questioning, the mind of an old man remains a blank, the sluggish brain refuses to work; then, some chance word or phrase strikes a slumbering chord, an image is conjured up, one vision suggests another with startling rapidity, till, almost before we are aware, the knowledge which we craved out of that forgotten past is before us, graphic and convincing. A very similar process has been illustrated during the last few months with regard to the memory of Coke of Norfolk, the Whig prince of a bygone generation. Adored by his contemporaries, who witnessed his whole-hearted labours for the benefit of humanity, Coke, for lack of a biographer, had wellnigh vanished from the ken of posterity. Yet no sooner was an appeal made to this dormant memory, than slowly but surely his image revived. Forgotten facts came to light, neglected statistics of his labours, stories, instinct with the vigour which gave them birth, of his strong militant integrity. With unexpected clearness his personality materialised out of the shadows of the past.

Nor is the process at an end, for since the publication of his Life other facts and fresh correspondence have been discovered which lend an added interest to those previously published, since they render more convincing the portrait of the man already produced. Strong in his limitations as in his greatness, the figure of Coke remains in bold relief, even amidst the powerful light and shade of the age in which he lived.

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It is related of an ancestor of Coke, 'Mr. John Coke, sonne of Sir Edward Coke, the lawyer,' that he tooke much offence at one that ignorantly wrote him Cooke, not Coke. "Faith," says one that stood by, any men that ever saw him (for he was a great fellow and in large folio) would sweare he would rather be written 00 than O!"" And the legend is fantastically applicable to John Coke's descendant, for in whatever fashion the name of Coke of Norfolk may be written in the imagination of posterity it will not be as that of a man whose life or whose individuality can be typified by the despised cipher. In connexion with this fact, one matter may be worthy of com

ment. It was objected by a modern critic that, as portrayed in his biography, Coke of Norfolk was too immune from the vices of his generation. The contents of the Holkham muniment-room, it was suggested, must have been treated with too lenient a hand, since a man who was the boon companion of Fox, and who for many years tolerated the friendship of the Prince Regent, could not but be tainted with the vices for which his companions were notorious. Yet not only were those previous records of his life unexpurgated, but herein lies the interest of the fresh papers unearthed, that they testify more convincingly to what was, perhaps, the most curious phase of his character. For, in much essentially typical of his generation, Coke yet stood apart from it. He was in harmony with his world, but not of it. In an age when party spirit encouraged the most vindictive libels on the fair fame of any public character, we find him freely bespattered for his love of innovation, and vilified for the vehemence whereby he invariably gave a handle to his opponents; yet no breath of slander ever attempted to sully the record of his private life. Similarly in friendship he could sift the grain from the chaff with as fine a discrimination as he bestowed upon his farming experiments. The political morality of his associates was to him a matter of paramount importance; for this he selected or discarded them, for this he held them sternly answerable to himself and to humanity at large; but their private failings he probably treated with a leniency born of the age to which he belonged. His friendship with the Prince Regent was, at its best, half-hearted; but in his attitude towards Fox, the virtues of the great statesman could fill him with admiration, while the vices of Fox as a private individual provoked in him neither hostility nor a desire for participation. In his friendships as in his politics, Coke was strong enough to swim with the tide or to stem it as he saw fit.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the warmth of his attachment to merit better illustrated than in his correspondence with Roscoe which has just come to light. The man of letters, who was also a man of the people, is invariably addressed by Coke with a humility in which there is no hint of patronage to mar the frankness of his admiration for superior worth. Mr. Coke is the best and the kindest of human beings,' writes Roscoe to his wife, from Holkham, and the hours we pass . together at dinner are most delightful, as he always speaks his mind with a sincerity that appears in every look and action.' 'There is not such a bauble as popularity!' Coke himself exclaims in a letter to Roscoe, and it is only to the opinion of men such as yourself that I attach any real value.'

This sentiment is possibly further illustrated in the attitude of Coke's daughters towards their father's friend. Having been requested by Roscoe to send him some verses of her own composition, Lady Anson indited to him an effusion in verse, which, although it cannot be