numerous muscles. To chip a flint into the rudest tool, or to form a
barbed spear or hook from a bone, demands the use of a perfect hand;
for, as a most capable judge, Mr. Schoolcraft (68. Quoted by Mr. Lawson
Tait in his Law of Natural Selection, Dublin Quarterly Journal of
Medical Science, Feb. 1869. Dr. Keller is likewise quoted to the same
effect.), remarks, the shaping fragments of stone into knives, lances,
or arrow-heads, shews extraordinary ability and long practice. This
is to a great extent proved by the fact that primeval men practised a
division of labour; each man did not manufacture his own flint tools or
rude pottery, but certain individuals appear to have devoted themselves
to such work, no doubt receiving in exchange the produce of the chase.
Archaeologists are convinced that an enormous interval of time elapsed
before our ancestors thought of grinding chipped flints into smooth
tools. One can hardly doubt, that a man-like animal who possessed a
hand and arm sufficiently perfect to throw a stone with precision, or
to form a flint into a rude tool, could, with sufficient practice, as
far as mechanical skill alone is concerned, make almost anything 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 genus, musical
cadences; but in man the 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 men, and therefore to the best
representatives of our early progenitors, we find that the hands of the
Quadrumana are constructed on the same general pattern as our own, but
are far less perfectly adapted for diversified uses. Their hands do not
serve for locomotion so well as the feet of a dog; as may be seen in
such monkeys as the chimpanzee and orang, which walk on the outer
margins of the palms, or on the knuckles. (69. Owen, Anatomy of
Vertebrates, vol. iii. p. 71.) Their hands, however, are admirably
adapted for climbing trees. Monkeys seize thin branches or ropes, with
the thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on the other, in the
same manner as we do. They can thus also lift 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 young from the nests
of birds. American monkeys beat the wild oranges on the branches until
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