24 THE BEST WOKK ON ZOOLOGY 



Luckily, this animal, presumably truculent, is only 

 known now in a fossil and highly fragmentary con- 

 dition and, as his presence has not yet been detected 

 in British territory, it may be assumed that he 

 will not claim representation at the coming Colonial 

 Conference. 



When Haeckel defined the gap between man and 

 other mammals, he gave the name of Pithecanthropus, 

 or Ape-man, to a hypothetical creature which must 

 have filled it once ; since which M. Dubois has dis- 

 covered remains of the missing link in the Pliocene or 

 early Pleistocene deposits of Java. Part of a skull, 

 two teeth, and one thigh-bone, badly diseased, scarcely 

 suffice to decide whether their late owner should be 

 admitted to the Hominidce or Man family or relegated 

 to the Simiidce, or Ape family. Meanwhile, men of 

 science have given themselves and us the benefit of 

 the doubt. According to modern classification, the 

 Hominidce consist of a single genus, and that genus of a 

 single species, Homo sapiens, Man the Wise. Without 

 disputing the universal fitness of the epithet ' wise,' one 

 may reflect complacently that poor relatives are very 

 troublesome, and that it is well for our nearest, the 

 gorilla, to be kept in his place. Some consolation, also, 

 may be derived from a sentence in Mr. Beddard's 

 learned contribution to the Cambridge Natural His- 

 tory. Speaking of the great throat pouches which 

 enable the gorilla to produce appalling howls, he gives 

 a figure of the human larynx, showing traces which 

 ' remain to testify to a former howling apparatus 

 in the ancestors of man.' Blessed be that saving 



