Turning now to the nearest allies of man, and therefore to the best representatives of our early progenitors, we find that the hands in the Quadrumana are constructed 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 locomotion; 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.[200] 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 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 branches until the rind is cracked, and then tear it off with the fingers of the two hands. Other monkeys open mussel-shells with the two thumbs. With their fingers they pull out thorns and burrs, and hunt for each other’s parasites. In a state of nature they break open hard fruits with the aid of stones. They roll down stones or throw them at their enemies; nevertheless, they perform these various actions clumsily, and they are quite unable, as I have myself seen, to throw a stone with precision. It seems to me far from true that because “objects are grasped clumsily” by monkeys, “a much less specialised organ of prehension” would have served them[201] as well as their present hands. On the contrary, I see no reason to doubt that a more perfectly constructed hand would have been an advantage to them, provided, and it is important to note this, that their hands had not thus been rendered less well adapted for climbing trees. We may suspect that a perfect hand would have been disadvantageous for climbing; as the most arboreal monkeys in the world, namely Ateles in America and Hylobates in Asia, either have their thumbs much reduced in size and even rudimentary, or their fingers partially coherent, so that their hands are converted into mere grasping-hooks.[202]