The Descent of Man. 16o 



group we find none of the special characteristics of the 

 others — but it has triumphed in the struggle for existence, 

 as ■ this audience shows. Man has neither fleetness nor 

 fossorial abilities. His ancestors took to the trees and found 

 in an arboreal life both greater safety and abundance of 

 food. They trusted to their wits instead of to fleetness or 

 strengtli, and became the most inquisitive and intelligent 

 of animals. Monkeys resemble man in these respects far 

 more closely than other animals — even the intelligent dog 

 or horse. All monkeys are exceedingly suspicious, and that 

 indicates wisdom. When tamed, they have a remarkable 

 power of readily discovering the state of mind of their 

 masters. Anthropoid apes are also intelligent, but for 

 various reasons their habits have not been studied as 

 closely as those of monkeys. The defenceless condition 

 and social habits of the Quadrumana have been, it is thought, 

 the means of the development of their intelligence to a 

 point which has made the human intellect possible. 



As to the period of geological time in which man first 

 appeared, there is much doubtful evidence. We have some 

 evidence of his existence in Europe, where the ground has 

 been more thoroughly investigated than elsewhere, before 

 the glacial j^eriod. Flints, to all appearances artificially 

 manufactured, have been discovered by the Abbe Bourgeois 

 in the Middle Miocene of France, which may have been 

 made by man. As an alternative Prof. Gaudry suggests that 

 they may have been made by the Dryopithecus. In America 

 palaeolithic fliuts have been found in the glacial gravels of 

 the Delaware valley, and, as I believe, in the upper Plio- 

 cene beds of the West and South West. William Taylor 

 has found palaeolithic iinplements in the same bed with 

 Glyptodon and extinct species of horses in 8. W^ Texas. 

 Ameghino has found human bones in the Ui)per Pliocene of 

 Buenos Ayres. We find also the remains of primitive races 

 in caves, as at Neanderthal and elsewhere, and they have 

 been collected in sufficient numbers to show that some of 

 them represent a race distinct from all existing races, — the 

 lowest type of man we know, while others do not differ 

 materially from modern types. Their anatomical character- 

 istics are similar to those of the anthropomorphous apes — 

 as indicated by the thickness of the skull and lower jaw, 

 the flatness of the tibia, etc. Man is the only ([uadrumanous 

 animal possessing a chin. In the jaws of some of these 



