" CONTRE-EVOLUTION " 205 



reactions in physiology and anatomy. Dr. Sinnott apparently 

 has not realised that the exuberance of mammalian life, following 

 upon the comparative dominance of the lowly herbs, was apt to 

 be pregnant with the germs of decay, simply because it was 

 based upon an " unholy alliance," and, as such, sociologically 

 inferior. 



If we carry our research further back in time, we find that 

 the Pliocene age was the era immediately preceding the Glacial 

 period. It merged itself into the Pleistocene, the period of 

 Pithecanthropus erectus. According to Prof. E. W. Berry, 

 another American writer, the Pliocene age probably witnessed 

 the most profuse and diversified mammalian life and arborescent 

 flora that the world has ever seen. It is highly significant that 

 the fauna co-existing with the arborescent flora of that happy 

 time was known as the " Hipparion " fauna, from the abundance 

 at that time of the small fleet horses of the Hipparion type. 

 Evidently the earth at that time was a magna parens frugum 

 and, concurrently, a great parent of normal, i.e., non-monstrous 

 animals a time of " holy," i.e., symbiotic alliances, with the 

 restraining and balancing effects of Symbiosis clearly marked 

 upon the structure of the animal. 



When the Pliocene made way for the Pleistocene Glacial 

 period, many of the early representatives of the human race 

 evolved into nomadic hunters. Many of their descendants, 

 having migrated westward in successive waves from the arid 

 Orient, may have seen, as Prof. Berry says, the great glaciers of 

 the Rhone and the Rhine ; they may have hunted the wild horses 

 and mastodons in Southern France. More important from our 

 point of view than the geological is the physiological sequence. 

 For, inasmuch as these races became in-feeders, they degenerated 

 until some of them, e.g., the Neanderthalians, reached the stage 

 of the savage beast, marked by chronic Acromegaly a degeneracy 

 in which they exceeded the more conservative Anthropoids. 

 Gaudry's palaeo-physiological speculations, therefore, are not 

 without foundation, although it remained to be seen how well 

 they were founded. 



Reverting now to Dr. Larger's book, it is interesting to find 

 that the Proboscidea typical Acromegalics, according to him 

 are characterised by nasal bones of small dimensions, a character 

 which, as we are told, they have in common with present-day 

 acromegalic man. All of which recalls the morbid shortening- 



