In the matter of forcible seizure the conduct of the primitive man is on precisely the same footing as that of the fur-seal. As to when he began to learn from the birds and to do consciously what they do unconsciously--no one knows. In regard to the fighting with other males--man appears at a very early period to have given up the use of his natural weapons, the teeth, and to have discovered the greater utility of sharp stones and heavy clubs, and thus to have again placed himself apart from male animals, which depend on and develop automatically their tusks, horns, and claws in consequence of their value in fighting. The great interest of the jaw of the man-like Eoanthropus from Piltdown is that it was still fitted with a large canine tooth like that of a gorilla, big enough to be useful in a fight with another Piltdowner (see p. 287). But it dwindled, and in the course of time very early man-like extinct creatures were developed who had ceased to have big canines. They made use of chipped flints instead.
This substitution by man of "extraneous" weapons, decorations, and alluring appeals to the senses in place of those "intrinsic" to the animal body is all the more interesting, since we find that such substitution is already made by a number of birds, as, for instance, the magpie and the jackdaw, who collect all sorts of bright objects. The allied bower-bird of Australia makes a "play-run" or reception-room in which he places shells and bits of bone to attract the female, and the gardener bird of New Guinea clears a space in the scrub, roughly fences it and decorates it daily with bright-coloured flowers and mushrooms, freshly gathered and placed there by him, as any human bachelor may decorate his sitting-room for the delectation of his lady friends! It is a very noteworthy fact that these birds, which use extraneous decorative objects as lures, are themselves of dull plumage, but are allied to the wonderful group of Birds of Paradise, which show the greatest variety and brilliance of intrinsic decorative plumage known among birds. The love of brilliant decoration is equally keen in both groups, and is gratified in the one case by the use of extrinsic objects, in the other by the growth of intrinsic plumage. It appears that that strangely anthropoid bird--the penguin--or rather one species of penguin, familiar to Captain Scott and his companions in the Antarctic, has a similar habit of using an extraneous object as a gift or, shall we say, an excuse for an introduction when courting. The male penguin is shown in Mr. Poynting's wonderful cinema films of the Antarctic, picking up a well-shaped stone of some size and advancing with it in his beak to the lady penguin whom he has selected for his addresses. He places the stone at her feet, and retires a pace or two watching her. It is as though he said, "I am ready to build for you a first-class nest; best stones only used, of which this is a sample." If he is fortunate she looks at the stone and then at him, and without a word waddles to his side. Without more ado she accepts his proposal, and the work of constructing the stone-built nest is rapidly pushed on.