1907-1908.] 



47 



ship to the rest of the animal world, Professor Patten dealt with 

 the links connecting some of the most primitive of the living races 

 of mankind with the highest types, and also with those connecting 

 man with his nearest ape-like kinsman. In conclusion, the 

 lecturer touched briefly on the anatomy and habits of the man- 

 like apes now existing, first throwing on the screen pictures of 

 several of the fictitious forms described by the older naturalists, 

 and assured his audience that even if they were obliged to give up 

 their older and more poetical fancies of man's "all-glorious " origin 

 for what hard scientific truths whispered in their ears, they had 

 nought to be ashamed of, for, with the strong flowing tide of 

 evolutionary progress over countless ages, their reverence for the 

 nobility of manhood would not be lessened by the knowledge that 

 man was, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes ; for 

 he alone possessed the marvellous endowment of intelligible and 

 rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he 

 had slowly accumulated and organised the experience which was 

 almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in 

 other animals ; so that now he stood raised upon it, as on a 

 mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and 

 transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a 

 ray from the infinite source of truth. (Applause.) 



An interesting discussion then took place. 



Professor Symington said Dr. Patten, who was a man of 

 versatile talents, had raised a number of very controversial points. 

 For his own part he (the speaker) thought the missing link had 

 not yet been discovered. Even if they took the lowest of mankind 

 and compare with the anthropoid ape, there was a considerable 

 difference. The top of the skull and the thigh bone were the 

 most rigid and enduring parts in the scheme of development, and, 

 although estimates from the size of the brain were somewhat 

 hypothetical, yet between the lowest human and the highest ape 

 there was the wide difference of at least twenty ounces. That was 

 the main distinctive feature of man. They could not lay claim to 



