August 12, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



75 



public so hungrily demand are continually being discovered. 

 Great gaps are being closed up rapidly ; hut the records of this 

 work, being published in the journals of our scientific societies, are 

 hidden from the public eye as much as if they had been pub- 

 lished in Coptic. So rapidly have these missing links been estab- 

 lished, that the general zoologist finds it difficult to keep up with 

 the progress made in this direction. He can hardly realize the 

 completion of so many branches of the genealogical tree. 



Professor Cope, who has accomplished so much in this direction, 

 says, " Those who have, during the last ten years, devoted them- 

 selves to this study, have been rewarded by the discovery of the 

 course of development of many lines of animals ; so that it is now 

 possible to sho\v the kind of changes in structure which have re- 

 sulted in the species of animals with which we are familiar as living 

 on the surface of the earth at the present time. Not that this 

 continent has given us the parentage of all forms of animal life, or 

 all forms of animals with skeletons, or vertebrse, but it has given 

 us many of them. To take the Vertebrala, we have obtained the 

 long-since extinct ancestor of the very lowest vertebrates. Then 

 we have discovered the ancestor of the true fishes. We have the 

 ancestor of all the reptiles, of the birds, and of the mammals. If 

 we consider the mammals, or milk-givers, separately, we have 

 traced up a great many lines to their points of departure from very 

 primitive things. Thus we have obtained the genealogical trees of 

 the deer, the camels, the musk, the horse, the tapir, and the rhi- 

 noceros, of the cats and dogs, of the lemurs and monkeys, and 

 have important evidence as to the origin of man." 



The discovery in the western tertiaries of multitudes of huge 

 and monstrous mammals, and, earlier still, of gigantic and equally 

 monstrous reptiles, naturally led at once to an inquiry as to the 

 cause of their extinction. . . . Among the most interesting dis- 

 coveries connected with these creatures is the determination by 

 Professor Marsh that these early mammals, birds, and reptiles had 

 brains of diminutive proportions. ..." The small brain, highly 

 specialized characters, and huge bulk, rendered them incapable of 

 adapting themselves to new conditions, and a change of surround- 

 ings brought extinction. The existing proboscidians must soon 

 disappear for similar reasons. Smaller mammals, with larger 

 trains, and more plastic structure, readily adapt themselves to 

 their environment, and survive, or even send off new and vigorous 

 lines. The Dinoccrata, with their very diminutive brain, fixed 

 characters, and massive frames, flourished as long as the conditions 

 were especially favorable, but with the first geological change they 

 perished and left no descendants." 



Prof. A. E. Verrill, in a lecture at Yale College entitled ' Facts 

 Illustrative of the Darwinian Theory,' shows what an important 

 •factor parental instinct is in the evolution of species. He regards 

 the lack of parental care " as one of the probable causes, though 

 usually overlooked, of the extinction of many of the large and 

 powerful reptiles of the mesozoic age, and of the large mammals of 

 the tertiary." He says, " The very small size of the brain, and its 

 low organization, in these early animals, are now well known, and 

 we are justified in believing that their intelligence or sagacity was 

 correspondingly low. They were doubtless stupid and sluggish in 

 their habits, but probably had great powers of active and passive 

 resistance against correspondingly stupid carnivorous species. But, 

 unless the helpless young were protected by their parents, they 

 would quickly have been destroyed ; and such species might, in this 

 way, have been rapidly exterminated whenever they came in con- 

 tact with new forms of carnivorous animals, having the instinct to 

 destroy the new-born young of mammals, and the eggs and young 

 of oviparous reptiles. Thus it would have come about, that the 

 more intelligent forms, by the development of the parental instinct 

 for the active protection of their young against their enemies, would 

 have survived longest, and therefore would have transmitted this 

 instinct, with other correlated cerebral developments, to their de- 

 scendants." 



Prof. John Fiske, in his ' Cosmic Philosophy,' arrived at a similar 

 •conclusion in regard to early man. He showed, that, when varia- 

 tions in intelligence became more important than variations in physi- 



cal structure, then they were seized upon to the relative exclusion 

 of the latter. 



The wide-spread public interest in Darwinism arose from the 

 fact that every theory and every fact advanced in proof of the deriv- 

 ative origin of species applied with equal force to the origin of man 

 as one of the species. The public interest has been continually ex- 

 cited by the consistent energy with which the Church, Catholic and 

 Protestant alike, has inveighed against the dangerous teachings of 

 Darwin. Judging by centuries of experience, as attested by unim- 

 peachable historical records, it is safe enough for an intelligent man, 

 even if he knows nothing about the facts, to promptly accept as 

 truth any generalization of science which the Church declares to be 

 false, and, conversely, to repudiate with equal promptness, as false, 

 any interpretation of the behavior of the universe which the Church 

 adjudges to be true. In proof of this sweeping statement, one has 

 only to read the imposing collection of facts brought together by 

 Dr. White, the distinguished president of Cornell University, which 

 are embodied in his work entitled ' The Warfare of Science,' as well 

 as two additional chapters on the same subject which have lately 

 appeared in the Popular Science Monthly. 



Only the briefest reference can here be made to a few of the 

 numerous contributions on the subject of man's relationship to the 

 animals below him. The rapidly accumulating proofs of the close 

 relation existing between man and the Quadriiinana make interest- 

 ing every fact, however trivial, in regard to the structure and habits 

 of the higher apes. 



Dr. Arthur E. Brown has made some interesting experiments 

 with the monkeys at the Zoological Gardens in Philadelphia. He 

 found that the monkeys showed great fear, as well as curiosity, 

 when a snake was placed in their cage, though they were not 

 affected by other animals, such as an alligator and turtle. On the 

 other hand, mammals belonging to other orders showed no fear or 

 curiosity at a snake. These experiments, repeated in various ways, 

 lead him to only one logical conclusion, — " that the fear of the ser- 

 pent became instinctive in some far-distant progenitor of man by 

 reason of his long exposure to danger, and death in horrible form 

 from the bite, and it has been handed down through the diverging 

 lines of descent which find expression to-day in the genus Homo 

 and Pithicus." 



The same author, in an exceedingly interesting description of the 

 higher apes, says, " Mr. A. R. Wallace once called attention to the 

 similarity in color existing between the orang and chimpanzee and 

 the human natives of their respective countries. It would, indeed, 

 seem as if but half the truth had been told, and that the comparison 

 might be carried also into the region of mind ; the quick, vivacious 

 chimpanzee partaking of the mercurial disposition of negro races, 

 while the apathetic slow orang would pass for a disciple of the 

 sullen fatalism of the Malay." 



Dr. Brown has also given a description of the grief manifested by 

 a chimpanzee on the death of its mate. His grief was shown by 

 tearing his hair or snatching at the short hair on his head. The 

 yell of rage was followed by a cry the keeper had never heard be- 

 fore, — a sound which might be represented by ' hah-ah-ah-ah-ah ' 

 uttered somewhat under the breath, — and with a plaintive sound 

 like a moan. 



Mr. W. F. Hornaday read at the Saratoga meeting of this asso- 

 ciation an exceedingly interesting paper on the habits of the orang 

 as observed by him in its native forests. He says, " Each individual 

 of the Borneo orangs differs from his fellows, and has as many 

 facial peculiarities belonging to himself alone as can be found in 

 the individuals of any unmixed race of human beings." After 

 recounting the many traits of the orang, heretofore regarded as 

 peculiar to man, he says, " Let any one who is prejudiced against 

 Darwinian views go to the forests of Borneo ; let him there watch 

 from day to day this strangely human form in all its various phases 

 of existence ; let him see it climb, walk, build its nest, eat and 

 drink, and tight like human ' roughs ' ; let him see the female suckle 

 her young and carry it astride her hip precisely as do the cooly 

 women of Hindostan ; let him witness their human-like emotions of 

 affection, satisfaction, pain, and childish rage, — let him see all this, 



