BOGUS MISSING LINKS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 29, 27 February 1909, Page 3

BOGUS MISSING LINKS.

The so-called "niiissing link'' which has been exhibiting at Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere on the Continent turns out, as might have been expected, to be a fraud (says a. Hume paper). That is to say, instead of its being a something between a human being and a monkey, it is just an ordinary negro baby whose body is covered with hair—a somewhat curious freak of Nature, but one which .is not particularly uncommon.

It'is strange, by tlie way. how this queer im|x>sturc crops up again and agnin. Not more than a year or so after Darwin's ''Descent of ■Man" first appeared, a "missing link" turned up in New York, and was promptly annexed bv that prince of showmen, I'. T. ISarn'uni, who realised a fortune over the venture.

England'* turn came in 1883, when | Krao. ''the monkey-maiden," was ex-i hibi.ted at the Wmlniinster Aquarium as the real and ouly genuine ''link." Aj niillio-.i people paid to see her, and a great controversy raged in the Press concerning her. 'Professor Tymlall. however, who carefully examined her, pronounced her to be 'merelv a somewhat pretty and ex-ceedingly'inU-I!igent little Burmese girl, the onlv qibnorinality alwut her being the "rowth of fine, silky hair—si) closely matted together as to almost resemble fur—which clothed her from head to foot like a garment maMe with hands. A,s a matter of fact, the real missing links all disappeared oil' the earth some one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Neither were they pretty to look at or even interesting, being huge "orilla-like monsters, who walked with a .slouching gait or on all fours—scientist-, are not agreed upon this point—and fought iiercely 'with tlie other scarcely more beast-like creature* who were their contemporaries.