Chap. IV. 
MANNER OF DEVELOPMENT. 
139 
elapsed before our ancestors thought of grinding chipped 
flints into smooth tools. A man-like animal who pos- 
sessed a hand and arm sufficiently perfect to throw a 
stone with precision or to form a flint into a rude tool, 
could, it can hardly be doubted, with sufficient practice 
make almost anything, as far as mechanical skill alone 
is concerned, which a civilised man can make. The 
structure of the hand in this respect may be compared 
with that of the vocal organs, which in the apes are 
used for uttering various signal-cries, or, as in one spe- 
cies, musical cadences ; but in man closely similar vocal 
organs have become adapted through the inherited 
effects of use for the utterance of articulate language. 
Turning now to the nearest allies of man, and there- 
fore to the best representatives of our early progenitors, 
we find that the hands in the Quadrumana are con- 
structed on the same general pattern as in us, but are 
far less perfectly adapted for diversified uses. Their 
hands do not serve so well as the feet of a dog for loco- 
motion ; as may be seen in those monkeys which walk 
on the outer margins of the palms, or on the backs of 
their bent fingers, as in the chimpanzee and orang . 16 
Their hands, however, are admirably adapted for climb- 
ing trees. Monkeys seize thin branches or ropes, with 
the thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on 
the other side, in the same manner as we do. They 
can thus also carry rather large objects, such as the 
neck of a bottle, to their mouths. Baboons turn over 
stones and scratch up roots with their hands. They 
seize nuts, insects, or other small objects with the 
thumb in opposition to the fingers, and no doubt they 
thus extract eggs and the young from the nests of 
birds. American monkeys beat the wild oranges on the 
61 Owen, 1 Anatomy of Vertebrates,’ vol. iii. p. 71. 
