THE EVOLUTION OP MAN 93 



which the familiar corpuscles float. It was found a few 

 years ago that when the blood of different animals was 

 mixed, the serum of one specimen sometimes destroyed 

 the corpuscles in the other, leaving a deposit. Some- 

 times there was no action of one on the other, and it 

 varied considerably in the case of different animals. 

 After tens of thousands of experiments a clear law was 

 established. The action of one specimen of blood on 

 the other depended on, and varied with, the relationship 

 of the animals whose blood was transfused. The test 

 was applied to man and the anthropoid apes, and the 

 result was in complete accord with the theory of a close 

 relationship between them. 



It is probably no longer necessary to warn even the 

 general reader that man must not be regarded as 

 evolved from any existing genus of ape. Neither the 

 anthropoid ape nor the common monkey is In the line of 

 man's ancestry, any more than the Germans are in the 

 line of descent of the Anglo-Saxons. Man and the apes 

 have come from a common ancestor, just as English and 

 Germans have. The anthropoid apes are nearer, and 

 the ordinary apes more remote, cousins of ours. But 

 on the other hand it is necessary to remind many people 

 that, in developing from this common ancestor to the 

 human stage, our predecessors must have passed through 

 an ape stage. This is so true that, as we shall see, when 

 the earliest human remains were discovered fourteen 

 years ago, authorities were pretty evenly divided in 

 calling it an " ape " and a " man." They have only 

 come to terms by calling it an " ape-man." 



Let us now see if science can throw any light on this 

 common ancestor, and on the way in which humanity 

 was developed. The starting-point must be sought 

 somewhere about the beginning, or possibly just before, 

 the Tertiary epoch at least two or three million years 



