vii THE ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF MAN 423 



find some relics of these earlier forms of man along with 

 those of animals, which were presumably less abundant. 

 Negative evidence of this kind is not very weighty, but still it 

 has some value. It has been suggested that as apes are mostly 

 tropical, and anthropoid apes are now confined almost ex- 

 clusively to the vicinity of the equator, we should expect the 

 ancestral forms of man to have inhabited these same localities 

 West Africa and the Malay islands. But this objection is 

 hardly valid, because existing anthropoid apes are wholly 

 dependent on a perennial supply of easily accessible fruits, 

 which is only found near the equator ; while not only had 

 the south of Europe an almost tropical climate in Miocene 

 times, but we must suppose even the earliest ancestors of 

 man to have been terrestrial and omnivorous, since it must 

 have taken ages of slow modification to have produced the 

 perfectly erect form, the short arms, and the wholly non- 

 prehensile foot, 1 which so strongly differentiate man from 

 the arboreal apes. 



The conclusion which I think we must arrive at is, that if 

 man has been developed from a common ancestor with all 

 existing apes, and by no other agencies than such as have affected 

 their development, then he must have existed, in something 

 approaching his present form, during the Tertiary period 

 and not merely existed, but predominated in numbers, 

 wherever suitable conditions prevailed. If, then, continued 

 researches in all parts of Europe and Asia fail to bring to 

 light any proofs of his presence, it will be at least a pre- 

 sumption that he came into existence at a much later date, 

 and by a much more rapid process of development. In that 

 case it will be a fair argument that, just as he is in his 

 mental and moral nature, his capacities and aspirations, so 

 infinitely raised above the brutes, so his origin is due, in part, 



1 The common statement of travellers as to savages having great prehensile 

 power in the toes has been adopted by some naturalists as indicating an ap- 

 proach to the apes. But this notion is founded on a complete misconception. 

 Savages pick up objects with their feet, it is true, but always by a lateral 

 motion of the toes, which we should equally possess if we never wore shoes or 

 stockings. In no savage have I ever seen the slightest approach to opposa- 

 bility of the great toe, which is the essential distinguishing feature of apes ; 

 nor have I ever seen it stated that any variation in this direction has been 

 detected in the anatomical structure of the foot of the lower races. 



