VI 



THE CREATION OF SPECIES 



as to the origin of man are always 

 fascinating. The broad general proposition that 

 man is an evolutionary product and has lineage, could 

 we trace it, extending down to the lowest forms of 

 life, is so firmly established, thanks to Darwin and his 

 successors, that it now seems almost axiomatic. 

 That the mammals, with man at their head, represent 

 an offshoot from stock that includes in their collateral 

 channels reptiles and birds, and as a more primitive 

 division, amphibia and fishes, is matter of elementary 

 zoology nowadays, though it issued from the realm 

 of heresy an'd controversy within the memory of 

 people who are not yet old. 



But the question as to the precise stock from which 

 the most primitive of our vertebrate ancestors sprang 

 has reached no such stage of accepted solution. 

 Therefore the newest attempt to answer this question 

 has aroused no little commotion in the biological 

 world, and will doubtless be heard of presently in 

 unscientific circles. The author of the new theory is 

 Professor William Patten, of Dartmouth College. 

 Stated in a word, his theory is that the direct ances- 

 tors of the vertebrates the missing link between 

 the highest type of animate beings and the lower 



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