56 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



practice/' This is to a great extent proved by the fact that 

 primeval men practiced a division of labor ; each man did 

 not manufacture his own flint tools or rude pottery, but 

 certain individuals appear to have devoted themselves to 

 such work, no doubt receiving in exchange the produce of 

 the chase. Archaeologists are convinced that an enormous 

 interval of time elapsed before our ancestors thought of 

 grinding chipped flints into smooth tools. One can hardly 

 doubt, that a man-like animal who possessed a hand and 

 arm sufficiently perfect to throw a stone with precision, or 

 to form a flint into a rude tool, could, with sufficient prac- 

 tice, as far as mechanical skill alone is concerned, make 

 almost any thing which a civilized 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 genus, musical 

 cadences; but in man the 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 men, and therefore 

 to the best representatives of our early progenitors, we find 

 that the hands of the Quadrumana are constructed on the 

 same general pattern as our own, but are far less perfectly 

 adapted for diversified uses. Their hands do not serve for 

 locomotion so well as the feet of a dog; as may be seen in 

 such monkeys as the chimpanzee and orang, which walk on 

 the outer margins of the palms, or on the knuckles.* 

 Their hands, however, are admirably adapted for climbing 

 trees. Monkeys seize thin branches or ropes, with the 

 thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on the other, 

 in the same manner as we do. They can thus also lift 

 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 small 

 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 

 branches until the rind is cracked, and then tear it ofl' with 

 the fingers of the two liands. In a wild state they break 

 open hard fruits with stones. Other monkeys open mussol- 

 shells with the two thumbs. With their fingers they pull 



*Owen, " Anatomy of Vertebrates," vol. iii, p, 71. 



