72 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



in it. Stratz presents us with a curious creature 

 called a ' Molchmaus ' (salamander-mouse) as the 

 primitive type. In fact, so little seems to be known 

 of the form of the common ancestor, that in 1899, 

 at the Anthropological Congress at Lindau, when 

 Klaatsch expounded his theory in detail, Ranke 

 replied that such hypotheses were purely matters 

 of imagination. 



In criticising these theories, we must not lose 

 sight of a very important palceontological con- 

 sideration. The further back we place the ancestral 

 form, the more connecting links must we assume 

 between man, on the one hand, and this original 

 ancestor on the other. Let us consider the two 

 hypothetical pedigrees. We find in the one case 

 the successive lines of evolution leading up to the 

 apes and prosimise of the present day a beautiful 

 palseontological genealogy thirty species of fossil 

 prosimise and eighteen species of fossil apes. But 

 if we look at the other line, where we should 

 expect to find the intermediate forms between the 

 ancestral type and man of the present day, we 

 discover nothing. There is not a single genus or 

 species that can be regarded as a connecting link. 

 This fact is very important. If such a development 

 ever really took place, we should surely find transi- 

 tional forms also on this side. 



Possibly some one will remind me of the Pithec- 

 anthropus erectus ! I am just coming to it. In 

 the course of the palceontological examination of the 



