72 PRETTY POLL. 



seems to be the first great requisite for the evolution of 

 a high order of intellect. Man and the monkeys, for 

 example, have a pair of hands; and in their case one 

 can see at a glance how dependent is their intelligence 

 upon these grasping organs. All human arts base 

 themselves ultimately upon the human hand ; and even 

 the apes approach nearest to humanity in virtue of their 

 ever-active and busy little fingers. The elephant, again, 

 has his flexible trunk, which, as we have all heard over 

 and over again, usque ad nauseam, is equally well 

 adapted to pick up a pin or to break the great boughs of 

 tropical forest trees. (That pin, in particular, is now a 

 well-worn classic.) The squirrel, once more, celebrated 

 for his unusual intelligence when judged by a rodent 

 standard, uses his pretty little paws as veritable 

 hands, by which he can grasp a nut or fruit all round, 

 and so gain in his small mind a clear conception of 

 its true shape and properties. Throughout the animal 

 kingdom generally, indeed, this correspondence, or 

 rather this chain of causation, makes itself everywhere 

 felt; no high intelligence without a highly developed 

 prehensile and grasping organ. 



Perhaps the opossum is the very best and most crucial 

 instance that could possibly be adduced of the intimate 

 connection which exists between touch and intellect. 

 For the opossum is a marsupial ; it belongs to the same 

 group of lowly-organized, antiquated, and pouch-bearing 

 animals as the kangaroo, the wombat, and the other 

 belated Australian mammals. Now everybody knows 

 the marsupials as a class are nothing short of preter- 

 naturally stupid. They are just about the very dullest 



