276 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



his rise from the most man-like animals we know — the 

 great apes — is erroneous. The public was warned that 

 they must not jump to such a conclusion ; it was too 

 obvious, too facile. The " celebrated ape of the Darwin 

 shape," which popular songs made familiar to a wide 

 public, was declared to be only a remote rustic, not to 

 say brutalized, cousin of humanity, not in the direct 

 line happily ! Our real ancestors, it was declared, were 

 mild, intelligent little creatures, animals, it is true, but 

 animals which hastened to separate their mixed qualities 

 in two divergent lines of descent — (i) the intelligent, 

 mild-mannered clan who ceased to climb trees, and 

 walked uprightly on the soles of their feet, whilst their 

 teeth grew smaller and smaller, and their brains grew 

 bigger and bigger; and (2) the violent tree-climbing 

 members of the family, who refused to stand up, and 

 acquired bigger and bigger jaws and teeth, whilst their 

 brains remained small, their temper morose, and their 

 conduct violent. 



Old writers before the days of Darwin had talked 

 and written about the " missing link," though I cannot 

 say who first used the term in reference to a creature 

 intermediate between man and apes. Sir Charles Lyell 

 in 1 8 5 1 made use of the term in regard to extinct 

 animals which were intermediate in structure between 

 two existing types. A learned and able writer — the 

 Scotch judge, Lord Monboddo — in the later half of 

 the eighteenth century put forward a theory of the 

 development of mankind from apes such as the orang, 

 quite independently of any general theory of " transform- 

 ism" or of the progressive development of the animal 

 and vegetable worlds, from simple beginnings. Lord 

 Monboddo, in the absence of any knowledge of a " missing 

 link," or of animals intermediate between man and the 



