Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 148: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

On account of their size they were forced to use what brains they had in the invention of devices to save their strength for work. They were social creatures. AS soon as the population increased they formed elaborate social tabus that nearly ended them, for their ritual made mating so elaborate an affair that the common-sense thing to do was to break the laws, seize a wife and become an outsider. A great reformer arose inevitably—for the will of the apes to end their fantastic restrictions had to find an outlet—and cut the Gordian knot. He lived to an extraordinary age, and for most of his life he ruled over the tribe. And under that rule, they prospered marvelously well. A couple of centuries later they discovered agriculture, and then there was no checking them. It was no time at all before they reached the classical point of civilization when they realized that it was more worth their while to make their criminals and prisoners work for them than to eat them. They colonized extensively, being remarkably fecund animals. Their people were spread over most of the world before they had given up cannibalism. The slave system endured for a long, long time—so long that Striker wondered if they would never advance—though, of course, he knew. He found, although speeded up somewhat, the usual line of development. An _ industrial revolution occurred and Slavery came to an end. Cities in the real sense grew like mushrooms, most of them wrought from the tangled steel that was the only token left that genus homo had once passed that way. When great liners were plowing the sea, coming to berth in harbor cities. Striker knew with exhausted gratefulness that his incredible journey was near an end. He Saw drifting past him three of the blue radiational spheres in which human beings traveled through space, and tried to contact them but there was no reply. The spheres were from CORniclooo SS CO