70 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



what is now the bottom of a large part of the Indian 

 Ocean was above water. Such an hypothesis is in- 

 genious, inasmuch as it can not be successfully dis- 

 puted, and correspondingly weak because no part of 

 it can be proven. 



Mr. Huxley, in his Prefatory Note to Hseckel's Free- 

 dom in Science and Teaching, page 14, says : " Equine 

 quadrupeds have undergone a series of changes ex- 

 actly such as the doctrine of evolution requires. Hence 

 sound analogical reasoning justifies the expectation 

 that, when we obtain the remains of the Pliocene, 

 Miocene, and Eocene anthropoidse, they will present 

 us with the like series of gradations, notwithstanding 

 the fact, if it be a fact, that the Quarternary men, like 

 the Quarternary horses, differ in no essential respect 

 from those which now live." But Mr. Huxley should 

 know that the lover of facts needs something more con- 

 vincing than " sound analogical reasoning" to prove 

 that our ancestors filiated with apes, or were evolved 

 from them. Even Haeckel admits that no pithecoid 

 form now exists from which man could spring ; and 

 hints that the remains of the connecting link are in 

 the bottom of tropical* seas. Professor Marsh, in his 

 Vertebrate Life in America, page 40, says : " The lesser 

 gap between the primitive man of America and the 

 Anthropoid apes is partially closed by still lower forms 

 of men, and doubtless also by higher apes, now extinct. 

 Analogy, and many facts as well, indicate that this 

 gap was smaller in the past. It certainly is becoming 

 wider now with every generation, for the lowest races 

 of men will soon become extinct, like the Tasmanians, 

 and the highest apes can not long survive." The 

 "many facts" above alluded to are thus far wanting; 



