764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the fifth nerve as well as from the sixth. We may fairly suppose 

 that the branch from the fifth is the channel for the impulses 

 which cause the muscles to act as an inspiratory muscle when 

 raising the arm to pluck the apple, while that from the sixth 

 serves to excite the muscle to pull the shoulder forward. Now, 

 here we have got, apparently, the movements required for pluck- 

 ing the apple and conveying it to the mouth, and yet we have got 

 two nerves which seem superfluous — the seventh and eighth cer- 

 vical. We may suppose the seventh to be brought into play later 

 on, when the first pair recognized their nakedness, for its action 

 in the monkey is to bring the hand over the pubis in the position 

 of Eve's, as represented by Raphael in the Expulsion from Para- 

 dise (Fig. 34). We can not in this scheme find a place for the 

 eighth nerve in the entirety of its action, as observed in monkeys, 

 but the first part of the movement which it produces may be used 

 in throwing away the refuse of food. 



The mere fact that I have been unable to work this last nerve 

 properly into this scheme shows you how imperfect it is, yet I 

 trust that, as an attempt to hang together the facts — anatomical 

 and physiological — it may not be without service as an aid to your 

 memories, and still more as an inducement to you to find out the 

 true relationships of the different parts of the body. 



PROF. G. F. WRIGHT AND HIS CRITICS.* 



By Prof. E. W. CLAYPOLE, B. A., D. Sc. (Lond.), F. G. SS. L. E. and A., 



AKRON, OHIO. 



FOR more than twenty years a controversy on the antiquity of 

 man has prevailed in the scientific world. This controversy 

 is still far from decision. The origin of the human family is 

 veiled in obscurity, and all efforts to discover our primeval an- 

 cestor have hitherto failed. The gloom and darkness enshroud- 

 ing the past are not yet sufficiently dispelled by the light of sci- 

 ence to reveal prehistoric man in his early stages. 



The geologist and the archseologist have been chiefly engaged 

 in the search. They have followed the trail of man to some dis- 

 tance and can tell us something about him within narrow limits. 

 But beyond these their efforts have met with little success. At 

 this point it seems as if some huge effacing hand had swept across 

 the field and blotted out almost every trace of his existence. 



And this is no mere imagination. A huge effacing hand has 



* Man and the Glacial Period. By G. F. Wright. International Scientific Series. D. 

 Appleton & Co. 



