be of animals with
grasping power in their hands, and in the habit of using missiles
occasionally, of one or more species coming to use them habitually. All
the anthropoid apes are certainly intelligent enough to do this, if it
should prove advantageous to them. Its principal advantage, however,
would seem to be to a species that became largely carnivorous and needed
to capture running or flying prey.

The habit of using implements is one of supreme importance in animal
evolution. To it we owe man as he exists to-day. While animals confined
themselves to their natural weapons of teeth and claws, their
development must have remained a very slow one and been confined within
narrow limits. When they once began to add to their natural powers those
of surrounding nature, by the use of artificial weapons, the first step
in a new and illimitable range of evolution was taken. From that day to
this, man has been occupied in unfolding this method, and has advanced
enormously beyond his primal state. A crude and simple use of weapons
gave him, in time, supremacy over all the lower animals. An advanced use
of weapons and tools has given him, in a measure, supremacy over nature
herself, and raised him to a stage almost infinitely beyond that of the
animal which trusts solely to teeth and claws.

So far as we know, only one of the innumerable species of animals
attained this development; unless, indeed, the various races of men had
more than one ape ancestor. For the appearance of man there became
necessary, first, the development of an order of animals with power of
grasp in their hands; and, second, the development of one or more biped
species, with hands freed from duty as walking organs and capable of use
in other directions. A third necessity was very probably the exchange of
the frugivorous for the carnivorous habit, which would act as a
predisposing agency in inducing the animal to desert the tree for the
ground, and to employ weapons in the chase. The final result of all this
would be an erect, walking, and running animal, with arms and hands
quite free from their old duty, except during an occasional return to
the tree, and with the necessary straightening of joints and development
of supporting muscles.

What has been advanced above is, no doubt, largely a series of
assumptions and conjectures, few of which are sustained by known facts.
But as the matter stands, no other method of dealing with it can be
adopted, since th