"MISSING LINKS" MILLER 423 



the discussion of the case of the famous '''' nes'peropithecus^\" The 

 shape of the skull and teeth in a marsupial from Australia and a 

 lemur from Madagascar is rodentlike, while in the rest of the body 

 both animals are very different from rodents. Parachute membranes 

 of almost identical structure have been developed by mammals of 

 four widely unrelated kinds. It follows, therefore, first that a single 

 tooth, bone, or fragment of a fossil bone which resembles the cor- 

 responding part of the human skeleton does not necessarily pertain 

 to a creature nearly related to man, and second, that even if such 

 a single fragment were exactly intermediate in structure betweeii 

 the corresponding part of man and of some particular kind of great 

 ape it would not furnish evidence of the existence of an animal ivhose 

 total structure was shnilarly intermediate. The only conclusion that 

 could be safely drawn from a single bone or tooth is this : — That the 

 specimen illustrates a stage of structural intermediateness, but this 

 stage might have been arrived at as readily without direct blood re- 

 lationship as with it. A good example of what I mean is furnished 

 by the molar teeth of man, chimpanzee, and gorilla. In their structure 

 the molars of the chimpanzee are intermediate between those of gorilla 

 and man, but every one knows that a chimpanzee is not a " link " 

 either missing or living; yet the characters of the teeth are such 

 that, if the chimpanzee were extinct and some of its molars were 

 the only known fragments of any fossil ape, the unearthing of these 

 teeth might easily be hailed as the discovery of a missing link. 



With these circumstances in mind, it should be clear, I think, that 

 in order to bring the genuine scientific world into fairly unanimous 

 agreement it would be necessary to lay before it two or more parts 

 of a missing lipk, and that these parts should not only give trust- 

 worthy information about the structures most characteristic of man 

 but they should also have been found under circumstances showing 

 that they pertained to one individual. There is nothing special about 

 this criterion. It is the one used in the study of all fossils pertaining 

 to animals other than man. 



In the light of the understanding which we have now gained, 

 what is the status of the two fossils which have caused so much con- 

 troversy? I wish to leave to the reader the pleasure of finding his 

 own answer to this question. My part will be to summarize what 

 is actually known about the "Java Man " and the " Piltdown Man " 

 and to give an outline of what has been written about them. 



2 See Osborn, Airter. Mus. Novitates, No. 37, pp. 1-5, figs. 1-3, Apr. 25, 1922 ; Gregory 

 and Hellman, Amer. Mus. Novitates, No. 53, pp. 1-16, figs. 1-6, Jan. 9, 1923 ; Gregory, 

 Science, n. s., vol. 66, pp. 579-581, Dec. 16. 1927. 



