l899 S. S. BUCKMAN— HUMAN BABIES III 



Pleistocene Period,* in the Torrid Zone of the Old World, 

 either on the Continent of tropical Africa or Asia, or on 

 a former Continent now sunk beneath the surface of the 

 Indian Ocean — one which stretched from East Africa 

 .(Madagascar and Abyssinia) to East Asia (Burmah and the 

 Sunda Islands)." 



These are the views of Prof. Haeckel elaborated by that 

 profound and most painstaking research which is so grand 

 a feature in all German work, and illustrated by an im- 

 mense mass of most interesting detail concerning the 

 ontogenetic and phylogenetic history of the animal 

 kingdom. 



I will now venture to fill in slightly more detailed 

 portraits of our immediate ancestors. 



V. Our Pre-Human Ancestor 



By studying the embryonic and youthful characters of 

 fossils, and the characters of allied species in particular 

 series, it is often possible to predict, by methods known 

 to many palaeontologists, what the general appearance and 

 characters of a particular ancestor should be — one which 

 the rocks have not yet yielded to our researches. And in 

 many cases it has happened that, subsequently, the pre- 

 dicted ancestor has been found, answering most satis- 

 factorily to the portrait drawn on supposition. 



There is no reason why the same method should not 

 be pursued in the case of Man ; and working on this basis 

 it may be allowable to state, tentatively, the following 

 description of our pre-human ancestor, of the one answer- 

 ing to about the middle period of what Haeckel calls the 

 twenty-third stage. 



* He must have been earlier than that; for the excellently worked weapons 

 (Palaeoliths) are of Pleistocene Age. It would be reasonable to conclude that primitive 

 Man began in the Pliocene. 



