Chap. IV. MANNER OF DEVELOPMENT. 139 



elapsed before our ancestors thought of grinding chipped 

 flints into smooth tools. A man-like animal who pos- 

 sessed a hand and arm sufficiently perfect to throw a 

 stone with precision or to form a flint into a rude tool, 

 could, it can hardly be doubted, with sufficient practice 

 make almost anything, as far as mechanical skill alone 

 is concerned, which a civilised man can make. The 

 structure of the hand in this respect may be compared 

 with that of the vocal organs, which in the apes are 

 used for uttering various signal-cries, or, as in one spe- 

 cies, musical cadences ; but in man closely similar vocal 

 organs have become adapted through the inherited 

 effects of use for the utterance of articulate language. 



Turning now to the nearest allies of man, and there- 

 fore to the best representatives of our early progenitors, 

 we find that the hands in the Quadrumana are con- 

 structed on the same general pattern as in us, but are 

 far less perfectly adapted for diversified uses. Their 

 hands do not serve so well as the feet of a dog for loco- 

 motion ; as may be seen in those monkeys which walk 

 on the outer margins of the palms, or on the backs of 

 their bent fingers, as in the chimpanzee and orang. 16 

 Their hands, however, are admirably adapted for climb- 

 ing trees. Monkeys seize thin branches or ropes, with 

 the thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on 

 the other side, in the same manner as we do. They 

 can thus also carry rather large objects, such as the 

 neck of a bottle, to their mouths. Baboons turn over 

 stones and scratch up roots with their hands. They 

 seize nuts, insects, or other sinalL objects with the 

 thumb in opposition to the fingers, and no doubt they 

 thus extract eggs and the young from the nests of 

 birds. American monkeys beat the wild oranges on the 



61 Owen, ' Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. 71. 



