il6 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



rage; causing such a shower of missiles as effectually kept 

 us from approaching too near the tree." As I have re- 

 peatedly seen, a chimpanzee will throw any object at hand 

 at a person who offends him; and the before-mentioned 

 baboon at the Cape of Good Hope prepared mud for the 

 purpose. 



In the Zoological Gardens, a monkey, which had weak 

 teeth, used to break open nuts with a stone; and I was 

 assured by the keepers that after using the stone he hid it 

 in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch 

 it. Here, then, we have the idea of property; but this idea 

 is common to every dog with a bone, and to most or all 

 birds with their nests. 



The Duke of Argyll" remarks, that the fashioning of 

 an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar 

 to man; and he considers that this forms an immeasurable 

 gulf between him and the brutes. This is no doubt a very 

 important distinction ; but there appears to me much truth 

 in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion," that when primeval man 

 first used flint-stones for any purpose, he would have acci- 

 dentally splintered them, and would then have used the 

 sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one 

 to break the flints on purpose, and not a very wide step to 

 fashion them rudely. This latter advance, however, may 

 have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense 

 interval of time which elapsed before the men of the neo- 

 lithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone 

 tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise 

 remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding 

 them heat would have been evolved ; thus the two usual 

 methods of "obtaining fire may have originated." The 

 nature of fire would have been known in the many volcanic 

 regions where lava occasionally flows through forests. The 

 anthropomorphous apes, guided probably by instinct, build 

 for themselves temporary platforms; but as many instincts 



« "Primeval Man," 1869, pp. 145, 147. 

 « "JPrehistoric Times." 1866, p 473, etc. 



