EVOLUTION OF MAN— SMITH. 557 



child's fancy, my dear. Nothing is to be depended upon but the great hippopotamua 

 test. If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you are no ape, though you 

 bad four hands, no feet, and were more apeish than the apes of all aperies. Always 

 remember that the one true, certain, final, and all-important difference between you 

 and an ape is that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain and it has none. If 

 a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape's brain, why, it would not be one, you know, 

 but something else. 



The measure of the futility of the contention thus held up to scorn 

 can be more justly realized now; for some years ago I discovered that 

 the feature referred to in KLugsley's burlesque phrase, "hippopotamus 

 major," which Owen claimed to be distinctive of the human brain^ 

 and Huxley maintained was present also in apes, is quite a primitive 

 characteristic, and the common property of the mammalia in general. 



Tliis illustration of the nature of the discussions which distracted 

 attention from the real problems, although the most notorious one, 

 is unfortunately characteristic of the state of alTau-s that prevailed 

 when prejudice blinded men's eyes to the obvious facts that were 

 calling so urgently for calm investigation. 



MAN'S PEDIGREE. 



No one who is familiar with the anatomy of man and the apes can 

 refuse to admit that no hypothesis other than that of close kmship 

 affords a reasonable or creditable explanation of the extraordinarily 

 exact identity of structure that obtams m most parts of the bodies 

 of man and the gorilla. To deny the validity of this evidence of 

 near kinship is tantamount to a confession of the utter uselessness of 

 the facts of comparative anatomy as mdications of genetic relation- 

 ships, and a reversion to the obscurantism of the dark ages of biology. 

 But if anyone still harbors an honest doubt in the face of this over- 

 whelming testimony from mere structure, the reactions of the blood 

 will confirm the teaching of anatomy; and the susceptibility of the 

 anthropoid apes to the infection of human diseases, from which other 

 apes and mammals m general are mimuno, should complete and clinch 

 the proof for all who are willuig to be convmced. 



Nor can anyone who, with an open mind, applies similar tests to 

 the gibbon refuse to admit that it is a true, if very primitive, anthro- 

 poid ape, nearly related to the common ancestor of man, the gorilla, 

 and the chimpanzee. Moreover, its structure reveals indubitable 

 evidence of its derivation from some primitive Old World or catar- 

 rliine monkey akin to the ancestor of the langur, tlu^ sacred monkey 

 of India. It is equally certaui that the catarrhine apes were derived 

 from some primitive platyrrlune ape; theother,l(»ss modified, descend- 

 ants of which we recognize in the South American monkeys of the 

 present day; and that the common ancestor of all these primates 

 was a lemuroid nearly akin to the curious little spectral tarsica*, 

 which still haunts the forests of Borneo, Java, and the neighboring 



