IS6 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



nearest blood relatives, whatever may be his 

 prejudice in the matter, are the so-called anthro- 

 poid or man-like apes : the orang, chimpanzee, go- 

 rilla, and gibbon, all descendants from the same 

 stock which gave rise to humanity." 10 And 

 again: "There is reason to believe that the hu- 

 man precursor, before leaving the sheltered life 

 of an arboreal primate, progressed and acted 

 much as do the gibbons, with a consequent quick- 

 ening of the intellect as time went on." " 



We might quote ad infinitum similar passages 

 of professorial wisdom, all written with the same 

 assurance as that of the learned professors who 

 pronounced upon the Talgai skull as one of the 

 missing links belonging to the Pleistocene period. 

 They knew with certainty that it was the skull 

 of a youth between fourteen and sixteen years 

 of age, "an individual in whom all trace of the 

 brute had not yet disappeared." All indeed would 

 have been well, except for some one prosaiG 

 enough to prove that the person in question had, 

 with some other aborigines, been shot on the open 

 plain near Talgai, in 1848, and tenderly laid 

 away by the police in a billabong filled with red 

 basaltic clay. 



"Lull, "The Evolution of the Earth," p. 139. 

 Ibid., p. 141. 



