HAECKEL AND THE NEW ZOOLOGY 



directly spring? That is a question that has proved 

 itself of lasting, vital human interest. It is a question 

 that long was answered only with an hypothesis, but 

 which Professor Haeckel to-day professes to be able 

 to answer with a decisive and affirmative citation not of 

 theories but of facts. In a word, it is claimed that man's 

 immediate ancestor is now actually upon record, that 

 the much- heralded " missing link" is missing no longer. 

 The principal single document, so to speak, on which 

 this claim is based consists of the now famous skull 

 and thigh-bone which the Dutch surgeon, Dr. Eugene 

 Dubois, discovered in the year 1891 in the tertiary 

 strata of the island of Java. Tertiary strata, it should 

 be explained, had never hitherto yielded any fossils 

 bordering on the human type, but this now famous 

 skeleton was unmistakably akin to the human. The 

 thigh in particular, taken by itself, would have been 

 pronounced by any competent anatomist to be of hu- 

 man origin. Unquestionably the individual who bore 

 it had been accustomed to take an erect attitude in 

 walking. And yet the skull was far inferior in size and 

 shape to that of any existing tribe of man was, in- 

 deed, rather of a simian type, though, on the other 

 hand, of about twice the capacity of any existing ape. 

 In a word, it seemed clear that the creature whose part 

 skeleton had been found by Dr. Dubois was of a type 

 intermediate between the lowest existing man and the 

 highest existing man-apes. It was, in short, the actual 

 prototype of that hypothetical creature which Haeckel, 

 in his genealogical tree, had christened pithecanthropus, 

 the ape-man. As such it was christened Pithecan- 

 thropus ereMis, the erect ape-man. 



