INTRODUCTION. 15 



detect and to follow their quarry by scent, he 

 found his nose practically of no use as an aid to 

 a living. Had he developed, during his early 

 earth-walking career, olfactory powers anything 

 like equal to those of the dog, I make bold to 

 say that all of us, if we were now existing, 

 would be getting our livings by sniffing for 

 roots and grubs like a badger, or by yelping 

 along a trail like a pack of jackals ! Because, 

 happily, he could not profitably follow his nose, 

 primitive man was obliged to exercise his wits. 

 Where the dog or the wolf gallops blindly and 

 without thought along the tainted line left by the 

 feet of his quarry, the primeval hunter had, from 

 the first, not only to learn to notice each displaced 

 twig, or shifted stone, or shaken dew-drop, but 

 had also — from these and a thousand other data 

 — to infer what had passed that way, when it had 

 passed, and often, in the case of one wounded 

 animal in a herd, Jiow it had passed, and whether 

 it were sufficiently disabled to make pursuit a 

 profitable speculation. As far as I can see, this 

 faculty, engendered and necessitated by olfactory 

 shortcomings, formed the basis of much of our 

 vaunted reasoning power. 



When we analyse, not only the hobby of the 



