82 TJie Descent of Man. 1'a.rt 1. 



actually closed for a time against the caravan. It deserves 

 notice that these baboons thus acted in concert. Mr. Wallace 41 

 on three occasions saw female orangs, accompanied by their 

 young, " breaking off branches and the great spiny fruit of the 

 " Durian tree, with every appearance of rage ; causing such a 

 " shower of missiles as effectually kept us from approaching too 

 " near the tree." As I have repeatedly seen, a chimpanzee wil] 

 throw any object at hand at a person who offends him ; and the 

 before mentioned baboon at the CajDe of Good Hope prepared 

 mud for the purpose. 



In the Zoological Gardens, a monkey, which had weak teeth, 

 used to break open nuts with a stone ; and I was assured by the 

 keepers that after using the stone, he hid it in the straw, and 

 would not let any other monkey touch it. Here, then, we have 

 the idea of property ; but this idea is common to every dog with 

 a bone, and to most or all birds with their nests. 



The Duke of Argyll 42 remarks, that the fashioning of an 

 implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man ; 

 and he considers that this forms an immeasurable gulf between 

 him and the brutes. This is no doubt a very important dis- 

 tinction ; but there appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's 

 suggestion,' 13 that when primeval man first used flint-stones for 

 any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and 

 would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it 

 would be a small one to break the flints on purpose, and not a 

 very wide step to fashion them rudely. This latter advance, 

 however, may have taken long ages, if we may judge by the 

 immense interval of time which elapsed before the men of the 

 neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. 

 In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, 

 sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them heat 

 would have been evolved : thus the two usual methods of 

 " obtaining fire may have originated." The nature of fire would 

 have been known in the many volcanic regions where lava 

 occasionally flows through forests. The anthropomorphous 

 apes, guided probably by instinct, build for themselves tem- 

 porary platforms ; but as many instincts are largely controlled 

 by reason, the simpler ones, such as this of building a platform, 

 might readily pass into a voluntary and conscious act. The 

 orang is known to cover itself at night with the leaves of the 

 Pandanus ; and Brehm states that one of his baboons used to 

 protect itself from the heat of the sun by throwing a straw-mat 



41 'The Malay Archi pelage' vol. 1*5, 147. 

 ul8S9, p. 87. * 3 ' Prahistoric Times,' 1855. p, 



« « Primeval Man,' 1869, pp. 473, &c 



