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Show 52 THE DESCENT OF MAl.~. PART I. makino- a great uproar, rush furiously against each other. 0 Brehm, when accompanying the Duke of CoburgGotha., aided in an attack with fire-arms on a troop of baboons in the pass of 1\iensa in Abyssinia. The baboons in retnrn rolled so many stones down the mountain, some as large as a mau's head, that the attackers had to beat a hasty retreat; and the pass was actually for a time closed against the caravan. It deserves notice that these baboons thus acted in concert. Mr. Wallace 26 on three occasions saw female orangs, accompanied by their young, " breaking off branches and " the great spiny fruit of the Durian tree, with every " appearance of rage ; causing such a shower of missiles " as effectually kept us from approaching too near the "tree." In the Zoological Gardens a monkey which had weak teeth used to break open nuts with a stone ; and I was assured by the keepers that this animal, after using the stone, bid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. Here, then, we have the idea of property ; but this idea is common to every dog with a bone, and to most or all birds with their nests. The Duke of Argyll 27 remarks, that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he considers that this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. It is no doubt a very important distinction, but there appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion,28 that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any purpose, be would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one to intentionally break the 26 'The Malay Archipelago,' vol. i. 1869, p. 87. 27 'Primeval Man,' 1869, pp. 145, 147. 28 ' Prehistoric 'rimes,' 1865, p. 473, &:c. CilAP. II. MENTAL POWERS. 53 flints, and not a very wide step to rudely fashion them. This latter advance, however, may have taken long ages if we may judge by the immense interval of time whi~h elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them heat would have been evolved: "thus the two usual "methods of obtaining fire may have originated." The nature of fire would have been known in the many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through forests. The anthropomorphous apes, guided probably by instinct, build for themselves temporary platforms; but as many instincts are largely controlled by reason, the simpler ones, such as this of building a platform, might readily pass into a voluntary and conscious act. The orang is known to cover itself at night with the leaves of the Pandanus; and Brehm states that one of his baboons used to protect itself from the heat of the sun by throwing a straw-mat over its head. In these latter habits, we probably see the first steps towards some of the simpler arts; namely rude architecture and dress, as they arose amongst the early progenitors of man. Language.-This faculty bas justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately remarks, "is not the only animal that " can make use of language to express what is passing in " his mind, and can understand, more or les~, what is so " expressed by another." 29 In Paraguay the Oebus azarm when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which 29 Quoted in 'Anthropological Review,' 1864, p. lti8. |