THE INTERPRETER 137 



for the purpose survived, and passed into the vocabu- 

 lary, becoming the parent of a great group of words. 

 Without question, the acquisition of speech became 

 a dominant factor in determining the high develop- 

 ment of the human brain. To quote Professor Cun- 

 ningham : 



The first word uttered expressive of an external ob- 

 ject marked a new era in the history of our early 

 progenitors. At this point the simian or brute-like 

 stage in their developmental career came to an end, 

 and the human dynasty, endowed with all its intellec- 

 tual possibilities, began. The period in the evolution 

 of man at which this important step was taken was a 

 vexed question, and one in the solution of which we 

 had little solid ground to go upon beyond the material 

 changes produced in the brain, and the consideration 

 of the time that these might reasonably be supposed 

 to take in their development. . . . The struc- 

 tural characters which distinguish the human brain in 

 the region of the speech-centre constitute one of the 

 leading peculiarities of the human cerebral cortex ; 

 they are totally absent in the brain of the anthropoid 

 ape, and of the speechless microcephalic idiot. 

 Further, it was significant that in certain anthropoid 

 brains a slight advance in the same direction might 

 occasionally be faintly traced, whilst in certain human 

 brains a distinct backward step is sometimes notice- 

 able. The path which had led to this special develop- 

 ment was thus in some measure delineated. These 

 structural additions to the human brain were no recent 

 acquisition by the stem-form of man, but were the 

 result of a slow evolutionary growth, a growth which 

 had been stimulated by the laborious efforts of count- 

 less generations to arrive at the perfect coordination 



