When photographs of natural bridges lie around me on a table, there is another vision that comes before my mind in a succession of vivid pictures. I behold a shaggy little animal, partly an ape, partly a man, who stands upright on a fallen tree; below his feet a river in flood foams among rocks; and over there, beyond the peaked hills, a blood-red sunset makes a wondrous tragedy of colour. Somehow the little animal is awed by the flaming sky, and stares at it fascinated, his protruded mouth wide open, and his teeth gleaming. His arms are thin, sinewy, capable, hairy, and very long; they hang at full length, and their prehensile fingers grasp two sticks, one long and pointed, another short and knobbed. His breastbone looks weak as his shoulders droop forward, and horizontal lines of wrinkled skin run from each armpit across the narrow chest. His legs are short and somewhat arched; and their feet grip wood as a habit. The eyes, overhung by a ledge of bone, shimmer with a peculiar suspicion, an instinctive cunning, very vigilant and fierce, that protects even tired sleep with the alertness of a sentinel. The body is daubed with yellow ochre and iron ore, as if to rival the coloured life seen everywhere in Nature; but through this decoration much uneven hair is noticeable, and a coarse beard surrounds the face with a ruff rather similar to that which now gives pride to the _Cebus capucinus_. The head is becoming human, a real Pandora box, whence many banes and a few blessings will escape continually, and spread far and wide over the earth. At present this creature is a wild beast in the terrible nursery stage between apehood and savage manhood. Already he has lost the athletic ease and grace of his tree-top cousins. Not only is he out of joint with them, but his own lot is very perilous, a never-ending war against hardships and dangers. Beasts of prey know how weak he is; most animals outrun him; birds in their swift flight escape from his weapons, and he feels rage and jealousy when monkeys at play leap long distances from bough to bough. Out of his nature comes a pitiless hatred for all living creatures. Do you not see this earthling, this Adam of Evolution, part ape and part man, standing alone on a windfall bridge, with a river in flood below his feet, and the sun a radiant crescent, blood-red, dipping below that far horizon of peaked hills? And yet this biped has been moved by the sunset, and also by an idea of his own, whose history can be read in deep lines of ploughed earth that run from the bridge to a wood over there, a hundred yards away. At this distance from the river a tall tree was blown down, and a tribe of ape-like men, guided by their leader, dragged it to the bank-side and put it across the waterway, taking long days over the wonderful task. Nature at last has discovered a mind that can think in imitation. Her tree-bridge has a rival.