THIRD day's sitting. 63 



they learned to fight after a more rational manner. But 

 Mr. Darwin here takes it for granted that, in older times, 

 brutes could manufacture "clubs" and "other weapons," 

 which implies, of course, that they could also manufacture 

 tools. Think of wild beasts manufacturing tools, my 

 Lord ! We shall be hearing next of manufactories set up 

 in the dens and cages of the Zoological Gardens ! 



Darwin. My Lord, " he who rejects with scorn the belief 

 that the shape of his own canines, and their occasional 

 great development in other men, are due to our early 

 progenitors having been provided with these formidable 

 weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his 

 descent. For, though he no longer intends, nor has the 

 power, to use these teeth as weapons, he will unconsciously 

 retract his ' snarling muscles,' (thus named by Sir Charles 

 Bell), so as to expose them ready for action, like a dog 

 prepared to fight." (Vol. i. p. 127.) 



Homo. Mr. Darwin is becoming very oracular, my Lord ; 

 but it would help his argument more if he could show any 

 rational ground on which it might be believed that the 

 canines of man, and the tusks of the wild boar, or of the 

 elephant — a single one of which, he tells us, " has been 

 known to weigh 180 pounds " — have been developed from 

 the same common prototype. No intelligent person sneers 

 when told that the earth turns on its axis, and travels with 

 almost inconceivable rapidity in its orbit round the sun ; 

 he feels that there are good grounds on which he may 

 believe this ; but Mr. Darwin requires us to believe, without 

 any evidence whatever, that the canine teeth of man, the 

 tusks of hogs and elephants, and, I may add, the horns of 

 stags and antelopes — all of them once lay concealed in the 

 head of a tadpole ! 



Darwin. "This tooth," my Lord, "the canine, no longer 



