THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 313 



know the genealogical tree of the various apes, a tree very 

 rich in "species, which extends from the present as far back as 

 the hypothetical primitive form assigned to the earliest part 

 of the Tertiary period; and, in fact, in Zittel's work, "Grund- 

 ziige der Palaontologie" (1895), not less than thirty genera of 

 fossil Pro-simise and eighteen genera of genuine fossil apes are 

 enumerated, the which have been entombed in those strata of 

 the earth that intervene between the Lower Eocene and the 

 Alluvial epoch, but between this hypothetical primitive form 

 and man of the present time we do not find a single connecting 

 link. The entire genealogical tree of man does not show so 

 much as one fossil genus, or even one fossil species J^ {Op. cit, 

 italics his.) A brief consideration of the principal fossil re- 

 mains, in which certain palaeontologists profess to see evidence 

 of a transition between man and the primitive pithecoid stock, 

 will serve to verify Wasmann's statement, and will reveal the 

 fact that all the alleged connecting links are distinctly human, 

 or purely simian, or merely mismated combinations of human 

 and simian remains. 



(1) Pithecanthropus erectus: In 1891 Eugene Dubois, a 

 Dutch army surgeon, discovered in Java, at Trinil, in the 

 Ngawa district of the Madiun Residency, a calvarium (skull- 

 cap) , 2 upper molars and a femur, in the central part of an old 

 river bed. The four fragments, however, were not all found 

 in the same year, because the advent of the rainy season com- 

 pelled him to suspend the work of excavation. 'The teeth," 

 to quote Dubois himself, "were distant from the skull from 

 one to, at most, three meters; the femur was fifteen meters 

 (50 feet) away." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1898, p. 447.) 

 Dubois judged the lapilli stratum, in which the bones were 

 found, to be older than the Pleistocene, and older, perhaps, 

 than the most recent zones of the Pliocene series. "The Trinil 

 ape-man," says Osbom, ". . . is the first of the conundrums 

 of human ancestry. Is the Trinil race prehuman or not?" 

 {Loc. cit., p. 40.) Certainly, Lower Pleistocene, or Upper 

 Pliocene represents too late a time for the appearance of the 



