416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



of man's blood relationship with animals resembling in some general 

 manner the present-day gorilla and chimpanzee. These two " finds " 

 are known, respectively, from the places where they were unearthed, 

 as the " Java ape man " or " Trinil man " {PitliecantJiroyus erectus 

 Dubois), and the " Piltdown dawn man" {Eoanthropus dawsoni 

 Smith Woodward). The former was discovered in 1891-92 near 

 Trinil, central Java, the latter about 20 years afterward at Pilt- 

 down, Sussex, England. 



WHAT IS THE CONTROVERSY? 



So long as the discussion of missing links is limited to extinct 

 creatures which may have served to connect modern one-toed horses 

 Avith ancient five-toed ancestors or to connect straight shelled " thun- 

 derstones " with spirally coiled ammonites it arouses no particular 

 animosity. But when it extends to fossils which can be brought 

 forward as evidence that man is related to something simian, the 

 case is very different. Then ,it leads to the expressing of opinions 

 delivered from sharply defined and diametrically opposed points of 

 view. In other words, the subject becomes controversial, as may be 

 readily seen from a few especially characteristic and interesting 

 passages which I have selected from the abundant literature. 



First I shall take up the writings of authors who do not believe in 

 evolution as applied to man. To them the search naturally appears 

 foredoomed to failure. Sir Bertram C. A. Windle has admirably 

 expressed this mental attitude on pages 26 and 27 of the pamphlet 

 from which I have taken the sentence serving as a motto to this 

 article. 



Then, in the next place, there is the question of the missing link or links. 

 " There is not, as is often assumed, one ' missing link ' to be discovered, but at 

 least a score of such links, to fill adequately the gap between man and apes; 

 and their noudiscovery is now one of the strongest proofs of the imperfection 

 of the geological record." (Wallace, The World of Life, 1911, p. 247.) What 

 an amazing non-scquitur ! Surely it might be claimed, with at least equal 

 justice, that the fact that the " missing links " have not turned up is some 

 sort of proof that they do not exist, at least in any quantity. See the force of 

 a parti pris! The venerable writer of the lines just quoted has in a paragraph 

 almost immediately preceding stated that " all evolutionists are satisfied that 

 the common ancestor of man and the anthropoid apes must [his italics] date 

 back to the Miocene, if not to the Eocene, period." So that the line of argu- 

 ment is this : Although no one has ever seen any trace of him, man and the 

 apes must have had a common ancestor at the time mentioned ; nothing has 

 ever been found of that ancestor ; therefore the geological record is imperfect. 

 It does not need any profound acquaintance with logic to see through that 

 syllogism. 



At any rate, Wallace admits that there are a number of missing links, and 

 Branco, who as director of the Geological and Palaeontological Institute of the 

 Berlin University, may be accepted as a competent authority, tells us that in 



