26 WILLIAM DALE^ ESQ., f.S.A., ON PEEHISTORrC MAN : 



nails of man, the hairs on certain parts of the body, etc. But the 

 question naturally arises, How is it that these trifling characteristics 

 should have persisted to the present day, while the bony framework 

 of the body became what it now is as far back as the Pleistocene period ? 



It must be understood that none of the evolutionists hold that a 

 race of anthropoid apes, such as those which at present exist, were 

 the forefathers of mankind ; what they suppose is, that in Miocene 

 times, or earlier, there were ape-like animals who were the common 

 ancestors of man on the one hand, and of all varieties of the afe- 

 family on the other. But there is no explanation of the fact that 

 while there are many sorts of apes, science freely acknowledges 

 that there is only one race of mankind. Huxley says : "I cannot 

 see any good ground whatever, or any tenable sort of evidence, 

 for believing that there is more than one species of man." 



Now, if we suppose that there was such an ancestral ape, who was 

 the progenitor of man, we have several questions to ask — How did 

 man obtain his large brain ? How did he lose the hairy covering 

 of his supposed ancestors ? How did he acquire the gift of language ? 

 How did he assume his erect posture ? How did he get his shorter 

 upper limbs and longer lower limbs ? How did he get his flattened 

 foot, with the non-opposable great toe ? How was the human 

 hand evolved ? How did the teeth of man become differentiated 

 from those of the ape world ? 



We ask, in what order did these changes come, and what cause 

 could be assigned for such changes ? To take only the change of 

 posture, Professor Keith says : " The closer one studies the matter, 

 the magnitude of the structural transformation required by a change 

 of posture becomes more and more apparent. There is not a bone, 

 muscle, joint, or organ in the whole human body but must have 

 undergone a change during the evolution of our posture." 



Similar questions are no doubt mooted in the books of the leading 

 evolutionists, but these authorities give us no help at all, for at 

 every point they are hopelessly at variance. As Mr. Dale says : 

 " The mazes of speculation on this head are great and diverse." 

 Dr. Keith's solution is that the process occupied millions of years — 

 a phrase he uses several times — but this makes the persistence in 

 the human body of small characteristics similar to those in the body 

 of the ape all the more unintelligible. 



