Page Twelve 



EVOLUTION 



January, 1929 



Twigs from the Family Tree 



By N. K. MCKECHNIE 



Millions of years ago a forest fire drove 

 a family of our tree-dtuelling ancestors 

 apart. Most of them escaped over a moun- 

 tain pass into a warm and liospitabte 

 forest land, where through the slow mit- 

 leniums no need arose for them to modify 

 the ways of living of their fathers. But 

 two youngsters, who had become separated 

 from the others, remained, and their pro- 

 geny was modified by changing environ- 

 ment and climate. Il'e are their final 

 descendants. 



A few months ago on an almost inac- 

 cessible mountain in the heart of Africa 

 an old male gorilla roused liimself from 

 the bed on which he had enjoyed his atter- 

 noon siesta and looked about him. 



He was an awe-inspiring figure, the 

 very embodiment of brute strength. Four 

 hundred pounds in weight, seven feet in 

 height when standing upright, the heavy 

 body hung with enormous arms dwarfed 

 the bent mis-shapen legs beneath. It was 

 the arms i% fact that forced themselves 

 most upon an observer's attention. These 

 mighty limbs reached to below his knees 

 and were muscled like a man's thigh. 

 They could tear the body of a heavy- 

 weight prize-fighter in two. Nay, were 

 their owner muzzled so that he could not 

 use his powerful jaws and put in a closed 

 room with the twelve leading champions 

 of the ring, not one of those twelve would 

 leave the room alive. These arms of his 

 like the rest of his body were clothed with 

 long hair, black except on his back and 

 chest, which presented a grizzled, almost 

 silvery, appearance. His dark face was 

 almost bare of hair, but from the top of 

 his small head rose a stiff bush of black 

 bristles that added to his apparent size. 

 His eye-sockets were deep caves, his 

 nostrils gaped flat and wide, and beneath 

 them jutted his formidable jaws. 



On rising from his couch of twigs and 

 grass he had at first half squatted with 

 bent knees, the knuckles of his hands to 

 the ground, but now he raised himself to 

 his full stature and with head thrown 

 back sniffed the heated air. 



Yes it was there again, — the man-scent! 

 For two days now it had followed them, 

 arousing always a vague uneasiness in his 

 breast. 



They must move again. 



He gave a chuckling kind of call and 

 immediately the rest of the band began 

 to rouse from their lairs and assemble 

 round him. Gravely he waited until all 

 were present and then gave the word to 

 proceed. The oldest female led the way, 

 the others bearing their babies came next, 

 then the adolescent young, and finally 

 when all had disappeared in the dark tun- 

 nel of undergrowth, the old man himself 

 followed. 



For two or three hours the march pro- 



ceeded, the females stopping occasionally 

 on reaching an inviting open space, but 

 always continuing at the word of their 

 lord, until finally the sun had sunk low 

 and he approved of a halt in a small clear- 

 ing where numerous eight foot high clumps 

 of wild celery promised abundance of 

 food. 



Then commenced the going-to-bed prep- 

 arations. The younger members of the 

 party were tired and peevish, and disin- 

 clined to subject themselves to the custom- 

 ary maternal ministrations. But their ob- 

 jections were speedily quelled by a few 

 sound slaps and shakings quite after the 

 fashion of a human mother and each 

 youngster was gone over by the painstak- 

 ing parental fingers, ears, eyes and nostrils 

 carefully inspected and cleaned, and all 

 burrs and thorns picked from their fur 

 before they were allowed to ascend the 

 tree that the old male had selected for 

 their bed-room that night. It stood apart 

 from others, so that no leopard or other 

 tree-climbing enemy could reach the sleep- 

 ing-quarters except by way of the main 

 stem, and there at the foot the old man 

 prepared his own bed. Autocrat he might 

 be but he would give his life ere one of 

 his flock should be harmed. 



It was still light when the family were 

 all established in their aerial beds and 

 there was a considerable amount of un- 

 seemly noise among its younger members 

 in spite of the efforts of the mothers to 

 quiet it; but the old man at the foot of 

 the tree gave an admonitory roar and 

 smote on the trunk with his hand and the 

 chatter ceased as though by magic. 



Then the sun set and as suddenly fell 

 the tropic night. The gorilla family slept, 

 and if the slumber of the old male was 

 continually broken (for he always awoke 

 at the slightest sound) it was no remem- 

 brance of the ill-boding man-scent that 

 disturbed his rest. Out of scent, — out of 

 mind. 



But down the backward trail in one of 

 the clearings through which the gorillas 

 had passed, a white man and his black 

 boys had made their camp, and their 

 watch-fire glowed dully on the encircling 

 trees. 



The next day having fed well on the 

 luscious celery the old man gorilla was 

 making up arrears of sleep while his 

 family amused themselves at large in the 

 bush that surrounded the clearing, when a 

 sudden uproar brought him leaping to 

 his feet. The white hunter and his party 

 had stolen upon him up-wind, had 

 pounced upon an eighteen-month infant 

 wandering from his mother, and while 

 three stalwart blacks by their united ef- 

 forts were forcing the struggling, fight- 

 ing, soft-furred creature into a capacious 

 sack, the white man with a moving-picture 

 camera concealed in a bush was eagerly 

 reeling off foot after foot of film destined 



to afford a few minutes entertainment to 

 the sated inhabitants of the great raan- 

 cities irom which he had come. 



The old male glared around him. The 

 wind, as we have said, was blowing from 

 him to the men-folk and he did not sense 

 their presence. But he saw the excitement 

 of his wives and progeny, heard their 

 danger signals and hastened towards what 

 seemed to be the center of the disturbance. 

 There some of the mothers were searching 

 frenziedly for their infants, but others and 

 a number of the older-youngsters were 

 dodging about among the bushes peering 

 over and through the foliage at a most 

 unusual object visible at the margin of the 

 clearing, — a white man who was waving 

 his helmet to hold their interest while his 

 black assistant hidden in the bushes crank- 

 ed the movie-cainera industriously. 



The old male stopped astonished. Never 

 had he seen anything resembling this. 

 What was it? What did it mean.'' He, 

 too, crouch behind a bush and stared at 

 the mysterious apparition, his face wrink- 

 ling and twitching with curiosity. 



But one of the females on the outskirts 

 was more than excited ; she was angry 

 and in distress ; she was clattering her 

 teeth by rapid revolving motions of her 

 hands beneath her chin. And a young 

 male near her was endeavoring to alarm 

 the intruders by sounding the war-drum, 

 beating with his fists upon his immature 

 chest. 



The old man gorilla perceived them, 

 moved in their direction, and as he went 

 a strong whiff of the man-smell assailed 

 his nostrils. Again the strange disquiet 

 seized him, and with it anger at the per- 

 sistence with which he had been pursued. 

 He would drive them away. And raising 

 to his full height he began to force his 

 way towards the white man through the 

 entangled bush, roaring like a lion, teeth- 

 a-gleam, great fists causing his chest to 

 reverberate like a drum. 



Never before had such a spectacular 

 advance failed of its purpose, but in this 

 instance the enemy against whom it was 

 directed did not quail. The white man 

 stood his ground, and as the gorilla met 

 his eyes a strange psychic force smote him, 

 and for the first time in his life he feared. 

 In futile vent for his emotions he seized 

 a sapling, shook it passionately and with 

 a single wrench tore it, roots and all, 

 from the earth. Still the white man did 

 not move. Still the mysterious emana- 

 tions of human will impinged upon the 

 gorilla's consciousness, benumbing his spir- 

 it, turning his heart to water. His univ- 

 erse was crumbling; in another minute he 

 would have backed away, to have lived 

 for ever after the slave of Fear. 



And then suddenly among the trees he 

 saw the dark forms of the negroes lugging 

 the sack in which was the captured baby; 

 he caught its scent; he heard its muffled 

 cries; — and he came to himself again. All 

 his, — shall we say "manhood" — surely that 

 is not loo high a term ? — came back to him 

 like a flood. Stronger than his fear of 



