THE DESCENT OB ORIGIN OF MAN 75 



chase. Archeologists are convinced that an enormous in- 

 terval of time elapsed before our ancestors thought of grind- 

 ing chipped flints into smooth tools. One can hardly doubt 

 that a manlike animal who possessed a hand and arm suffi- 

 ciently 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 civilized man can make. The structure of the hand 

 in this respect may be compared with that of the vocal or- 

 gans, which in the apes are used for uttering 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 progenitors, 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 diversified uses. Their hands do noir» 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 palms, 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 ob- 

 jects, such as the neck of a bottle, to their mouths. Ba- 

 boons turn over stones and scratch up roots with their hands. 

 They 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. Ameri- 

 can monkeys 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 

 " Owen, "Anat, of Vertebrates," iii. p U. 



