342 THE LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION 



nians, the Digger Indians of North America, or the 

 natives of Fuegia, pass their lives so as to require 

 the exercise of few faculties not possessed in an equal 

 degree by many animals. In the mode of capture of 

 game or fish, they by no means surpass the ingenuity 

 or forethought of the jaguar, who drops saliva into 

 the water, and seizes the fish as they come to eat it; 

 or of wolves and jackals, who hunt in packs; or of 

 the fox, who buries his surplus food till he requires 

 it. The sentinels placed by antelopes and by monkeys, 

 and the various modes of building adopted by field 

 mice and beavers, as well as the sleeping place of the 

 orang-utan, and the tree-shelter of some of the Afri- 

 can anthropoid apes, may well be compared with the 

 amount of care and forethought bestowed by many 

 savages in similar circumstances. His possession of 

 free and perfect hands, not required for locomotion, 

 enable man to form and use weapons and implements 

 which are beyond the physical powers of brutes ; but 

 having done this, he certainly does not exhibit more 

 mind in using them than do many lower animals. 

 What is there in the life of the savage, but the satisfy- 

 ing of the cravings of appetite in the simplest and 

 easiest way ? What thoughts, ideas, or actions are 

 there, that raise him many grades above the elephant 

 or the ape ? Yet he possesses, as we have seen, a 

 brain vastly superior to theirs in size and complexity; 

 and this brain gives him, in an undeveloped state, 

 faculties which he never requires to use. And if this 

 is true of existing savages, how much more true must 



