1896-97.] Dr Munro on Intermediary Links. 
249 
Abstract of Paper “ On Intermediary Links between Man 
and the Lower Animals.” By Robert Munro, M.A., 
M.D. 
(Read January 4, 1897.) 
Dr Munro maintained in this paper that, by the attainment of 
the erect posture and the consequent conversion of his limbs into 
hands and feet, man became homo sapiens , and inaugurated a new 
phase of existence, by means of which the manipulative organs 
became correlated with the progressive development of the brain. 
In the evolutionary career of man two stages were therefore to be 
recognised. First, that during which his physical transformation 
had been effected, so as to adapt him to bipedal locomotion; 
second, that during which his mental organisation had become a 
new governing force in the universe. The one, being readily 
effected in accordance with the laws of morphological adaptation? 
had a short duration. The other, an extremely slow process, con- 
sisted of small increments to his knowledge, acquired by repeated 
experiences of reasoning from causes to effects and from means 
to ends. The one was merely an adjustment of physical con- 
trivances to physical ends, comparable to that by which the bird, 
the bat, and the whale had converted their limbs to their special 
purposes. The other had to be relegated to the mystic laboratory, 
where thought was converted into its material equivalent in the 
form of increased brain substance. The transition from the semi- 
erect to the erect posture could not, in point of duration, be at all 
paralleled with the ages during which this erect being had lived on 
the globe. It was also probable that this transformation took 
place in a limited area, so that the chances of finding the inter- 
mediary links of this stage were very small. On the other hand, 
the probability of finding erect beings with skulls in all grades of 
development, from a slightly changed Simian type up to that of 
civilised man, was enormously greater. He regarded the erect 
posture as the most conspicuous line of demarcation between man 
and the lower animals. From this standpoint the Java skeleton 
would come under the category of human ; but, if this line of 
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