50 The Descent of Man. Pari- 



shews " extraordinary ability an-i long practice." This is to a 

 great extent proved by the fact that primeval men practised s 

 division of labour ; each man did not manufacture his own flint 

 tools or rude pottery, but certain individuals appear to have 

 devoted themselves to such work, no doubt receiving in exchange 

 the produce of the chase. Archaeologists aro convinced that an 

 enormous interval of time elapsed before our ancestors thought 

 of grinding chipped fiints into smooth tools. One can hardlj 

 doubt, that a man-like animal who possessed a hand and arm 

 sufficiently perfect to throw a stone with precision, or to form a 

 flint into a rude tool, could, with sufficient practice, as far as 

 mechanical skill alone is concerned, make almost anything 

 which a civilised man can make. The structure of the hand in 

 this respect may be compared with that of the vocal organs, 

 which in the apes are used for tittering various signal-cries, or, 

 as in one genus, musical cadences ; but in man the closely 

 similar vocal organs have become adapted through the inherited 

 effects of use for the utterance of articulate language. 



Turning now to the nearest allies of men, and therefore to the 

 best representatives of our early progenitor^, we find that the 

 hands of the Quadrumana are constructed on the same general 

 pattern as our own, but are far less perfectly adapted for diver- 

 sified uses. Their hands do not serve for locomotion so well 

 as the feet of a dog ; as may be seen in such monkeys as the 

 chimpanzee and orang, which walk on the outer margins of 

 the pahns, or on the knuckles.'" Their hands, however, are 

 admirably adapted for climbing trees. Monkeys seize thin 

 branches or ropes, with the thumb on one side and the fingers 

 and palm on the other, in the same manner as we do. They can 

 thus also lift rather large objects, such as the neck of a bottle, to 

 their mouths. Baboons turn over stones, and scratch up roots 

 with their hands. Tliey seize nuts, insects, or other small 

 objects with the thumb in opposition to the fingers, and no 

 doubt they thus extract eggs and the young from the nests of 

 birds. American monkeys beat the wild oranges on the branches 

 until the rind is cracked, and then tear it off with the fingers ol 

 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 tu 

 throw a stone with precision. 



" Owea, Anatomy of Vertebratus,' vd. ill. p, 71 



