THE OLDEST RACE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1062, 27 June 1912, Page 4

THE OLDEST RACE.

GERMAN SCIENTIST’S TEST

WHO IS NEAREST THE APE?

An attempt is to be made at the Imperial Research Laboratory at Munich to determine, by blood piecipitiu experiments, which of the living races bears the closest blood relationship to the ape. Should the experiment succeed, it will settle many perplexing problems of science and may revolutionise the theories of evolutionists as well as theologians.

As the case now stands there is general agreement among scientists that man and the ape are descended from a common ancestor ; but as to whether the black, the white, the red, or the yellow man, the pigmy, the giant, or the medium sized man was the original human type, there are strong differences of opinion. One body of theorists holds that the negro is a degenerated white type, while another insists that .the white man is evolved from an ancient black type. To apply the blood-precipitin tests to the settlement of this problem, it will be necessary only to advance a few steps further on experiments made by Professor Nuttall, of the University of Cambridge, England. Sir Ray Laukester gives the following account of these experiments :

‘‘When into the blood of a live rabbit a small quantity of the blood or liquid serum separated from the blood clot of a man is introduced by injection in several doses separated by a day or two’s interval, the blood of the rabbit acquires a peculiar property. If the rabbit be killed and some of the blood be allowed to coagulate, the serum, or pale liquid part of the blood, may be collected and preserved in glass bulbs for experiment.

‘Tt is now found that if a tea-

spoonful of a clear, transparent dilution of human blood prepared either from fresh or from dried blood, be put in a test tube, and some of the prepared rabbit serum is poured into it, a milky appearance is produced where the two liquids meet, and as they mix the whole of the mixed liquid becomes clouded, The particles causing the cloudiness gradually collect together and sink to the bottom of the tube as a precipitate. Now, if serum from a rabbit not treated by an injection of human blood or serum be poured into a tube holding a specimen of the dilute human blood, such as yielded the precipitate when mixed with the ‘humanised’ rabbit serum’ there will be no precipitate at all. “Thus we prove that there is something present in the blood of the ‘humanised’ rabbit which causes the precipitate and which is not present in the blood of the unprepared rabbit. What is this precipitin 5 Is it the human blood itself, with which the first rabbit was prepared, which simply brings with it the precipitin ? Not at all, as we show by pouring some serum from ordinary human blood clot into a tube of dilute human blood. No precipitate is formed. It is, therefore, clear that the introduction of human blood into the living body of the first rabbit has set up a change in that animal’s blood, resulting in the formation of a substance having the power to cause a milkiness or precipitation in dilute human serum. There is little doubt that —as in the production of anti-toxin —the precipitin is manufactured ,in the rabbit’s blood by a chemical change of bodies present in the injected human blood and its own blood.

“The strangest thing about it all is that the precipitin in the serum of the blood of the humanised rabbit will not cause a cloudiness iu diluted dog’s blood, nor in that ol cattle, sheep, or, in fact, in that of any other animal except man and bis nearest ‘blood relations’ among animals —namely, the apes and monkeys.” It is found to be possible to compare the oegue of precipita tiou or cloudiuess iu different examples. In other words, those who have made and are making the experiments claim that it is proved by the experiments that the blood of the chimpanzee and the orang-outang, when tested with the humanised precipitin holding rabbit’s blood, gives a precipitate nearly as great as does that of man, while the common organ grinder’s monkey—the macaque—gives a good deal less. The South American monkeys — which differ iu the number of their teeth and iu their prehensile tails from man and the Old World monkeys—give only the merest traces of precipitin. The lemurs give no precipitin at all.