160 Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 



of giant body in nature's evolutionary workshop. In 

 the operation of natural selection a point was reached 

 where great size of body could aid no further, and in- 

 creased intelligence was demanded, so that individuals 

 of the highest order might learn from experience instead 

 of depending upon instinct alone. The great size of the 

 vegetable feeding animals made them unable to adapt 

 themselves to the physical changes going on in the world 

 and, therefore, they perished and became extinct. It 

 has been well said that the animal is the creature of en- 

 vironment, but that man is the creator of environment. 

 The first of the order of Primates, tO: which man belongs, 

 who have left any remains that have been discovered, 

 lived in the forests which grew in the closing time of the 

 Cretaceous period. The first remains of monkeys are 

 found in these deposits. Evolutionists do not believe 

 that man is the descendant of the monkeys any more 

 than that monkeys are the descendents of man. Back 

 in geological time, somewhere, it is believed that there 

 was a separation by development of two lines of animal 

 life from some unknown form, from one of which has 

 descended all the monkeys, apes and allied animals, 

 while from the other has come all the races and varieties 

 of the human family. Nature has expended her skill in 

 the development and perfecting of man as a single fam- 

 ily, a single genera and a single species. While there 

 are many varieties of the human race, there is but a sin- 

 gle species. The other branch of the order of Primates, 

 of the monkey family, has spread and developed into 

 many genera and species. In studying this development 

 of brain, let us take up as far as we can man in his up- 

 ward course from the animal. If we go back and down 

 in the history of man, we shall pass from the intelligence 

 of the most highly civilized and cultivated nations to 

 races lower in grade until we shall reach the savage, 

 but little above the brute in brain force, and there our 

 written or traditional history must close. This will take 

 us back only a few thousand years in time, which is al- 

 most nothing in comparison with the immense length of 

 time we believe man has been upon the- earth. The ear- 

 liest record of the presence of man that we can find is 

 told to us by the scattered specimens of his work that 



