578 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



and at once ate small cereal grains as these matured on the 

 wild plants. The very act of picking these stimulated the 

 frame to an u])right posture. The storing of these through 

 seasons of drought or of cold stimulated him — like the ants — 

 to construction of granaries. This was gradually followed — as 

 in the agricultural ants — by the preparation of selected ground, 

 the sowing of the grains, weeding of the cultivated areas, and 

 harvesting of the produce. More intensive cultivation in order 

 to secure larger crops for an increasing population stimulated 

 the brain and hand, by environal action and proenvironal re- 

 sponse, to fashion more complex implements, to sow more 

 carefully, to reap more quickly, to clean and store more per- 

 fectly, till all have culminated in the huge wheat-farms and 

 elevators of Western States. 



Alongside even this, however, the hand and brain have 

 acted and reacted to rid the grain of its husk — slowly performed 

 by the teeth alone originally — first by stone pounding or grind- 

 ing, that are a hand imitation of teeth action; next by assisted 

 animal labor, then by machines, till at length the complicated 

 milling apparatus represents the mentally compounded and 

 correlated action of hundreds of human hands that once were 

 kept busy in a more primitive state, but which the evolving 

 brain of recent man has condensed into hand-saving machinery, 

 that a few hands can guide. 



The supply of clothing in the fullest sense is even more sug- 

 gestive. Exposed to marked drop in temperature toward 

 night, during several months of the year, when they went to 

 rest, primitive sylvan or arboreal men doubtless often con- 

 structed temporary nests or shelters out of leafy boughs and 

 by hand action, like the orang of Selenka and of Moebius. 

 These they would often line with leaves, and in colder nights 

 nestling amongst these and beside each other, as monkeys 

 almost habitually do in zoological gardens, would appreciate 

 the added warmth. Palm or other leaves, grasses, or the fibrous 

 bases of palm-stalks miglit slowly be substituted. The semi- 

 woven aspect of the fibrous palm material would readily lend 

 itself as a covering during dull cold days, and in turn might 



