306 ANTHROPOID APES. 



ancestor of man and apes, is still to be found, and 

 this is the task assigned to palaeontology. Whether 

 this science, to which a great future belongs, will 

 ever accomplish the task, is a question which con- 

 cerns itself. Meanwhile, considering the great 

 palaeontological achievements of our day, the dis- 

 covery of the Odontornithcs, jEtosaurijBhamjjhorpichi, 

 Holoptychia, etc., we need not despair of the possi- 

 bility of discovering the true link between the 

 world of man and mammals. This purely specula- 

 tive side of research, this purely scientific mode of 

 treating the descent of man, is no longer satisfied 

 with unproved assertions, but will rather trust to 

 the strenuous labour of future times, and this need 

 not disturb any religious or political convictions. 

 Even if the assumed ancestral type should really be 

 discovered in some geological stratum, yet research 

 will have to overcome immense difficulties, if it is to 

 explain the development of the understanding and 

 of speech, and the growth of independent human 

 intelligence. Yet we must not, on this account, 

 refuse to recognize the possibility of achieving some 

 new discoveries in this direction. To do so would 

 be to stifle the impulse to scientific research, and 

 this would be unworthy of our former intellectual 

 achievements. Let us therefore labour on with 

 courage. 



In matters which concern ethnology we are con- 

 stantly shown that even those races of men which 

 are very remote from each other, and of whom it 

 cannot be supposed that they were in earlier times 

 united in one nation, have made the same technical 



