"THE MISSING LINK" 21 



human children and are very fond of their human friends. In 

 the jungles of Borneo the full-grown males often fight sav- 

 agely by biting each other's faces and by biting off fingers 

 and toes. At night the Orang makes a nest to sleep upon, 

 by breaking off leafy branches and laying them crosswise in 

 the forked top of a sapling. On this huge nest-like bed it 

 lies flat upon its back, grasps a branch firmly in each hand 

 and foot, and is rocked to sleep by the cradle-like swaying of 

 the tree-top. 



Unless attacked at close quarters, in their forest homes, 

 none of the great apes are dangerous to man. All of them flee 

 quickly from the dreaded presence of Man, the Destroyer. 

 They never fight with clubs, but when attacked at close quar- 

 ters they bite, just as do human roughs. When enraged, the 

 gorilla does beat its breast with its fists, just as Du Chaillu 

 said; and it does this even in captivity. 



"THE MISSING LINK." For thirty years at least, Science 

 has been seeking in the earth for fossil remains of some 

 creature literally standing between man and the great apes, 

 but at present unknown. In 1879, Mr. A. H. Everett made 

 for the Zoological Society of London a thorough examination 

 of the deposits on the floors of some of the caverns of Borneo. 

 To-day, some naturalists are straying toward the lemurs in 

 search of the parent stem of man's ancestral tree. Vain 

 quest! The gap between Man and Lemur is too great to be 

 bridged in this world. A coincidence between skull bones is 

 a long way from manlikeness. 



In 1913 there was discovered at Piltdown, England, a fos- 

 sil human skull of great antiquity, with a strongly ape-like 



