﻿24 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



execution of these purposes, while at the same time 

 it would have more and more adapted the lower ones 

 to discharging the sole function of locomotion. For 

 my own part, I cannot perceive any difficulty about 

 this : in fact, there is an admirable repetition of the 

 process in the ontogeny of our own children 1 . 



Next, with regard to the hand, Mr. Wallace says, 

 that it "contains latent capacities which are unused 

 by savages, and must have been even less used by 

 palaeolithic man and his still ruder predecessors." 

 Thus, " it has all the appearance of an organ prepared 

 for the use of civilized man 2 ." Even if this be true, 

 however, it would surely be a dangerous argument 

 to rely upon, seeing that we cannot say of how much 

 importance it may have been for early man — or even 

 apes — to have had their power of manipulation pro- 

 gressively improved. But is the statement true ? It 

 appears to me that if Mr. Wallace had endeavoured 

 to imitate the manufactures that were practised by 

 " palaeolithic man," he would have found the very 

 best of reasons for cancelling his statement. For it 

 is an extremely difficult thing to chip a flint into the 

 form of an arrow-head : when made, the suitable 

 attachment of it to a previously prepared arrow is no 

 easy matter : neither a bow nor a bow-string could 

 have been constructed by hands of much less per- 

 fection than our own : and the slaying of game with 

 the whole apparatus, when it has been constructed, 

 requires a manual dexterity which we may be per- 



1 For an excellent discussion on the ontogeny of the child in this 

 connexion, see Some Laws of Heredity, by Mr. S. S. Buckman, pp. 290, 

 et seq. (Proc. Cotteswold Nat. Field Club, vol. x. p. 3, 1892). 



3 loc. cit, p. 198. 



