ON OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 469 



factious that are the true "footprints of the Creator," the immediate 

 testimonials of the historical succession of the numerous groups of forms 

 which have peopled this earthly hall for so many millions of years. 

 Do petrifactions of the primates give. us auy determiuate points of sup- 

 port for the above-mentioned pithecometric law? Do they directly 

 confirm the much disputed " descent of man from apes""? According 

 to our view, this question must be undoubtedly answered in the affirm- 

 ative. Certainly the negative gaps which we here, as elsewhere, find 

 in paleontological knowledge are very much to be regretted, and 

 immediately in the primate stem they are, since most of these animals 

 lived upon trees, greater than in any other groups of animals. But to 

 offset these wide, empty spaces we have on the other hand a continu- 

 ally increasing number of positive facts, and these recently discovered 

 petrifactions have a phylogenetic value that can not be overestimated. 

 The most important and interesting of these petrifactions of the pri- 

 mates is the renowned Pithecanthropus erectus, which Eugene Dubois 

 found iu Java in 1894. As this pliocene ape man brought out a lively 

 discussion at the last zoological congress held three years ago at Ley- 

 den, I may be permitted to say a few words in criticism of it. 



From the proceedings of the cougress at Leyden (at which I was not 

 present), I learn that the most distinguished anatomists and zoologists 

 expressed different views as to the nature of this remarkable Pithecan- 

 thropus. Its remains, a skullcap, a femur, and some teeth, were so 

 incomplete that it was not possible to arrive at a conclusive judgment 

 regarding them. The final result of the long and spirited debate held 

 on this subject was that among twelve distinguished authorities three 

 declared the fossil remains to be those of a man, three that they were 

 those of an ape. Six or more other zoologists, on the contrary, stated 

 what I believe to be the real fact, that they are the fossil remains of a 

 form intermediate between ape and man. In fact the ordinary rules of 

 logic seem to me to justify this conclusion. The Pithecanthropus erectus 

 of Dubois is in fact a relic of that extinct group intermediate between 

 man and ape to which as long ago as iu 1886 I gave the name of Pithe- 

 canthropus. He is the long-sought " missing link' 7 in the chain of the 

 highest primates. 



The able discoverer of Pithecanthropus erectus, Eugene Dubois, has 

 not only convincingly pointed out his high significance as a "missing 

 link," but has also shown in a very acute manner the relations which 

 this intermediate form has on the one side to the lower races of man- 

 kind, on the other hand to the various known races of anthropoid apes, 

 as well as to the hypothetical stem form common to this entire group 

 of Prim aria or Anthropomorpha. This common stem form Dubois calls 

 Protohylobates (primitive gibbon). It has essentially the same struc- 

 ture as we find iu the gibbon of today (Hylobates) in southern Asia, 

 and as the fossil Pliopithecus, whose petrified remains have been found 

 in the Mid-Tertiary mountains of middle Europe (in the Upper Miocene 



