THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



[December 



social as a protection against enemies, whilst the jealousy of the adult 

 males would tend to establish solitary or family rather than social life. 

 We accordingly find that the larger Anthropoids, which are well able 

 to defend themselves, no longer live socially, the male living with his 

 wife (or wives, for the gorilla is polygamous) and children ; yet even 

 here the social instincts inherited from less specialized ancestors have 

 not entirely disappeared, for the chimpanzees sometimes assemble in 

 pretty numerous troops, and are then said to play together in a very 

 friendly manner. 



Amongst the gibbon-like apes of the Miocene age were forms with 

 less specialized arms, and, as a consequence, a less pronounced tendency 

 to arboreal habits. A bigger and more complex brain was associated 

 with the more frequent assumption of the erect attitude ; greater 

 intelligence enabled these creatures not only to use stones and sticks 

 as missiles, as several species of apes do, but to use them as weapons, 

 and to roughly shape them for that purpose. But the inability to 

 escape rapidly from bough to bough like the more specialized gibbons, 

 and the unsteadiness of gait inevitable in the first generations, which 

 ceased to use the fore limbs as organs of progression, rendered these 

 creatures, in spite of their rude weapons, peculiarly helpless in the presence 

 of such enemies as the larger beasts of prey ; and nothing but an 

 increased development of those social instincts which were already 

 possessed by their gibbon-like ancestors could have enabled them to 

 survive the perils to which they were frequently exposed. The pro- 

 position that high intelligence is necessarily associated with great 

 sociality cannot be maintained, for there are numerous instances of 

 animals which, though endowed with considerable intelligence, are 

 almost destitute of social instincts ; but that increased intelligence aris- 

 ing in a species already social and exposed to constant perils, which the 

 individuals can only overcome by united action, will result in increased 

 sociality there can be no doubt. 



During the Miocene age these awkward Anthropoids, whose shorter 

 arms, smaller teeth, and w r eaker jaws were correlated with an increase 

 of size and complexity in the brain, would have been speedily extermi- 

 nated if they had not retained and carried to a higher development the 

 habit of acting together against their enemies. Sympathy, not only for 

 their own young, but for all the members of the community, was a 

 necessity of existence, and those communities in which such sympathy 

 was most highly developed, in wmich the members were most ready to 

 subordinate their individual to the common welfare, would not only 

 have the best chance of overcoming such enemies" as the Carnivores, 

 but would be able to successfully resist hostile troops or individuals of 

 allied or even the same species. That hostile troops of apes sometimes 

 engage in battle is well knoAvn ; it may suffice to refer to the already 



