MANNER OF DEVELOPMENT. 49 



sitioH to the fingers, and no doubt they thus extract eggs and the 

 young from the nests of birds. American monlceys beat the wild 

 oranges on the branches until the rind Is cracked, and then tear it 

 off with the fingers of the two hands. In a wild state they break 

 open hard fruits with stones. Other monkeys open mussel-shells 

 with the two thumbs. With their fingers they pull out thorns and 

 burs, and hunt for each other's parasites. They roll down stones, 

 or throw them at their enemies: nevertheless, they are clumsy in 

 these various actions, and, as I have myself seen, are quite unable 

 to throw a stone with precision. 



It seems to me far from true that because "objects are grasped 

 "clumsily" by monkeys, "a much less specialized organ of pre- 

 "hension" would have served them™ equally well with their pres- 

 ent hands. On the contrary, I see no reason to doubt that more 

 perfectly constructed hands would have been an advantage to 

 them, provided that they were not thus rendered less fitted for 

 climbing trees. We may suspect that a hand as perfect as that 

 oi man would have been disadvantageous for climbing; for the 

 most arboreal monkeys in the world, namely, Ateles in America, 

 Colobus in Africa, and Hylobates in Asia, are either thumbless, or 

 their toes partially cohere, so that their limbs are converted into 

 mere grasping hooks." 



As soon as some ancient member in the great series of the 

 Primates came to be less arboreal, owing to a change in its man- 

 ner of procuring subsistence, or to some change in the surround- 

 ing conditions, its habitual manner of progression would have been 

 modified; and thus it would have been rendered more strictly 

 quadrupedal or bipedal. Baboons frequent hilly and rocky dis- 

 tricts, and only from necessity climb high trees;'- and they have 

 acquired almost the gait of a dog. Man alone has become a biped; 

 and we can, I think, partly see how he has come to assume his 

 erect attitude, which forms one of his most conspicuous charac- 

 ters. Man could not have attained his present dominant position 

 in the world without the use of his hands, which are so admirably 

 adapted to act in obedience to his will. Sir C. BelF" insists that 

 "the hand supplies all instruments, and by its correspondence with 

 "the intellect gives him universal dominion." But the hands anl 



™ 'Quarterly Review,' April, 1869, p. 392. 



'1 In Hylobates syndactylus, as the name expresses, two of the toes 

 regularly cohere; and this, as Mr. Blyth informs me is occasionally 

 the case with the toes of H. agilis, lar, and leuoiscus. Colobus is 

 strictly arboreal and extraordinarily active (Brehm, 'Thierleben,' B. i, 

 s. 60), but whether a better climber than the species of the allied gen- 

 era, I do not know. It deserves notice that the feet of the sloths, the 

 most arboreal animals in the world, are wonderfully hook-like. 



" Brehm, 'Thierleben,' B. i. s. 80. 



" "The Hand," &c. 'Bridgewaler Treatise,' 1833, p. 38. 

 5 



