Page Ten 



E VOLUTIO N 



April, 1929 



Our Face from Fish to Man 



Our readers ifil! be glad to hear of the publication of Dr. Wm. K. Gregory's 

 new book, "Our Face From Fish to Man." In Addition to a review by Dr. Horace 

 E. IVood, Jr., of New York University, zi.<e reprint below Dr. Gregory's own 

 preface and the forevjord by Jl'ni. Beebe. 



"OUR FACE FROM FISH TO 

 MAN," by William K. Gregory. 

 295 pages, 118 figures. G. P. Put- 

 nam's Sons, New York. $4.50. 



It seems hardly necessary, nowa- 

 days, to identify Dr. William King 

 Gregory as Professor of Vertebrate 

 Paleontology at Columbia University, 

 and Curator of Comparative Anatomy, 

 Curator of Ichthyology, and Asso- 

 ciate in Vertebrate Paleontology and 

 in Physical Anthropology at the Am- 

 erican Museum of Natural History. 

 It is a logical assumption that Dr. 

 Gregory would be the universal choice 

 as the individual best qualified by 

 training and ability to write such a 

 book — and the result certainly ac- 

 cords with such a prediction. 



The subtitle, "A Portrait Gallery of 

 Our Ancient Ancestors and Kinsfolk, 

 Together with a Concise History of 

 Our Best Features," gives only a hint 

 of the treat in store for the reader, 

 whether technically trained or not. 

 The wealth of magnificent illustra- 

 tions (in large part drawn from Dr. 

 Gregorji-'s own work) almost tell the 

 story in themselves. They are rein- 

 forced by a text that is always accu- 

 rate, always readable, and sometimes 

 distinctly sprightly. It would be no 

 reproach to so excellent a book to be 

 simply a compilation of other men's 

 results; but a surprising portion of the 

 book rests on the original work of Dr. 

 Gregory himself, and he has focussed 

 a large part of the remaining material 

 into a new synthesis. Mr. William 

 Beebe contributes a characteristic 

 foreword. 



Although the title specifically dis- 

 claims such broad inclusiveness, this 

 book comes closer to being an ade- 

 quate modern treatment of vertebrate 

 evolution than any other book on the 

 market. 



Science moves forward, most of the 

 time, by detailed studies of minute 

 points. Finally, the layman, the stu- 

 dent, and even the specialist, find 

 themselves oppressed by the dead 

 weight of a mass of unassimilated de- 

 tail. Then some analytical mind 

 brings order out of chaos, and every- 

 one says, "Why, of course, it couldn't 

 be any other way." For such a syn- 

 thesis, we are now indebted to Dr. 

 Gregory 



"Wholly ignorant of the facts, the 

 ancient Jewish priests indulged them- 

 selves in the fancy that man vras 

 made in the image of God; but mod- 

 ern science shows that the god-like 



mask which is the human face is made 

 out of the same elements as in the 

 gorilla; and that in both ape and man 

 the bony framework of the face is 

 composed of strictly homologous ele- 

 ments, inherited from a long line of 

 lower vertebrates." (P. 91.) 



— Horace Elmer Wood, 2nd. 



WILLI.^M KING GREGORY 



PREFACE 



.\ccording to popular standards of 

 civilized peoples, men of one's own 

 race and tongue were called "men," 

 "warriors," "heroes," but people of 

 other races were "barbarians," "unholy 

 ones," "foreign devils." The founder 

 of one's own clan was often considered 

 to be the son of a deity, while the 

 barbarians were the descendants of 

 monkeys or other wild animals. Or 

 the first man was created perfect, in 

 the image of God. One's own family, 

 of course, was fairly true to t.vpe but 

 sin had played havoc with the features 

 of other races. To believe all this was 

 comforting to one's own "face" in a 

 world where the inferiority complex 

 occasionally haunted even kings. 



Imagine then the effect of telling 

 one-hundred per cent Americans that 

 the.v are not the descendants of the 

 god-like Adam but are sons and daugh- 

 ters of Dryopithecits, or of some nearly 

 allied genus of anthropoid apes that 

 lived in the Miocene age — and that be- 

 fore that they had long tails and ate 

 grubs and beetles! 



If the reader is curious to know the 

 worst he will find it in these pages. 



There even his own great-grandfather 

 — a Jove-like patriarch with ample 

 beard, piercing eyes and an aquiline 

 nose — will be subjected to unsparing 

 analysis. It will be shown how much 

 the proud old gentleman was indebted 

 to a long line of freebooting forebears 

 that struggled for a precarious living 

 in the sea, on muddy flats, on the up- 

 lands or in the trees — aeons before 

 .\dam delved or Eve span. In detail 

 it will even be charged that the real 

 founder of the family was not the 

 powerful settler to whom the king gave 

 a grant of land extending far back 

 from the river, but a poor mud-sucking 

 protochordate of pre - Silurian times; 

 that when in some far-oflf dismal 

 swamp a putrid prize was snatched by 

 scaly forms, their facial masks already 

 bore our eyes and nose and mouth. 



Accordingly, this little book can 

 hardly expect much popularity either 

 in Tennessee, where the very idea of 

 evolution is anathema, or in the metro- 

 politan strongholds where pithecopho- ■ 

 bia is still prevalent and man's com- 

 plete superiority to the all too man-like 

 apes is somewhat nervously stressed. 



Nor can the author hope for much 

 favor from the public, that wants only 

 results and is willing to spend a billion 

 dollars annually on cosmetics and 

 safety razors. For this book does 

 not pretend to tell how to improve 

 one's face but only how and why one 

 has one. 



At best then it can only hold a 

 magic mirror up to proud man and bid 

 him contemplate his own image — a 

 composite of an infinitely receding 

 series of faces — human, prehuman, an- 

 thropoid, long-snouted, lizard-like — 

 stretching back into the shadows of 

 endless time. W. K. G. 



FOREWORD 

 By WILLIAM BEEBE 



A foreword to a volume such as the 

 present one of Dr. Gregory's is as 

 superfluous as would be the retention 

 of the third eye, the Cyclopean one, 

 of our ancestors, in the center of our 

 forehead today. No more wonderful 

 subject for a volume could be imagined 

 than the evolution of the human face, 

 and no more competent author than 

 William K. Gregory. The result seems 

 to me eminently satisfactory. 



If the reader's interest is real but 

 cursory, let him do nothing but look 

 at the illustrations. They will ensure 

 a thousand per cent interest to every 

 walk along Fifth Avenue or Regent 

 Street. If pressure of other interests 

 permits only an hour's perusal, or com- 

 plete lack of natural history knowledge ^ 

 requires facts to be strained through 

 the mesh of popular language, read but 

 the preface and the first few par- 

 agraphs of each chapter. Taken as a 

 whole this is not a "popular" book in 

 the sense of a superficial one. The 

 details of evolution of our eyes, ears. 



