The 'Missing Link' Again

New Zealand Tablet, 24 December 1908, Page 9

The 'Missing Link ' Again

Many of our readers will remember the old-fashioned, cottage-shaped weather-glass (on the hygrometer principle) in which the figure of a man comes out through a spring doorway to indicate approaching rain, and the figure of a woman to foretell sunshiny days — the lady ' waits till tho clouds roll by.' When Darby is out, Joan is in; and when Joan is out Darby is not- visible. The sea-serpent and the 'missing link' seem to have got into a similar habit. One- or other of the pair is commonly due about this season of the year. We cannot -recall their simultaneous arrival. The sea-serpent made, during the' past, few years, two consecutive bows before a very thin audience and promptly played the vanishing trick. It was, therefore, 'up to ' the ' missing link ' to go and do likewise. And this he has obligingly done. For, since tho last appearance of the sea-serpent, he has shown up (alivo and frisky) in tho Northern Territory (Australia) and, last week, mouldy and dusty and as dead as Holof ernes, -at Oorreze, in the central plateau of France. So much we learn from a cable message from Paris, which appeared in last week's daily papers, and which conveys the rather. hazy and doubtful information that some remains found at Chapelle aux Saints, Correze, are ' supposed to be the "^•missing link"' between ane and man. '' But people have ' found 'the ' missing link ' just as other people are said to have ' caught ' the elusive and exasperating Irish elf , the leprechaun, or Puck the Fairy— ' The spiite Of the merry midnight, Who laughs at weak mortals, and loves the moonlight. *

Thus, the historic Neanderthal skull was deemed by some to belong to some such ape-man. But it is long since under- ' stood that the peculiar formation of the Neanderthal brainbox was simply due to disease. Twenty years ago Professor Dubois claimed to have found some dead 'missing links ' in the wilds of Java. ' But they have not yet ' materialised.' Darkest Africa has also been made the scene of some alleged discoveries of 'missing links.' But the links remain -missing still. And, finally, one or two years ago (as stated) the cable announced a living specimen of the 'missing link '.among a .tribe of blacks in the Northern Territory of Australia. Examination and second thoughts, however, pretty promptly showed that th<S alleged half-ape, half-man, was iu form a perfect man, gifted with the intelligence, the speech, and the other special human faculties that make an unbridgeable chasm between the highest ape and the most .degraded of our fellow-creatures Some hasty generaliser labelled that fine dark snecimen of humanity a missing link ' for no better reason" than that the alleged 'link' had a deformed big toe! A well-known American humorist liked 'a good looking man'- 'not a pretty man,' added he, ' but one who looks well— into things, one whom you can't phule with a mare's nest unless he sees the old mare on it.' That hasty Northern Territory observer did not' look well into things, and discovered, not the ' missing link,' but merely a mare's nest. * .. '3 he mass of Palseontologica.l evidence,' says the late Mr. Mivart in his Genesis of Species (n.' 129), 'is indeed overwhelmingly against minute and gradual modification ' of animals and plants, which is demanded by genetic evolution. The gaps that exist in the animal kingdom correspond to the gaps that are found throughout all geological history, so far as it has been explored. Says Gerard, in Ins lhe Old Reddle (pp. 228-9): 'It is this total absence ot graduated series, linking different forms together, that is the great and fundamental difficulty in the way of genetic evolution. Yet this seems seldom to be realised, and it scorns constantly to be assumed that, in order to establish tho genetic continuity ot two creatures, no more is required than to discover another standing mere or less between them. Thus, in the most famous of^all instances, how often do we hear of " the missing link " between man and apeas though, should a generalised form be disclosed, which might be considered a common ancestor, the question of mans simian [monkey] origin would be finally settled ! In the same way, as we have seen, the existence of birds with reptilian features, is taken by some as conclusive proof that birds aud reptiles have descended irom one stock J Jut what is most imperatively wanted, is nersistently wanting—namely, some evidence of a series in which one form passes to another, as in a dissolving view. And yet, genetic ovolutjonists must suppose such series to have been the universal rule throughout the whole course of life on earth.' * If their theory were true, the earth should be peppered all over with the various stages of the ane's efforts to become a man. But the ' missing links ' are not alone missing; they are missing just where we should be stumbling over them in myriads. And the true scientist-who does not make a theory into a dogma of science— may well say as did Sir Charles Lyell (Darwin's close friend and adimrer) after he had realised all the • bearings of the Darwinian theory: 'I think the old "creation" is almost as much required as ever ' (Life of Darwin, vol. ii. s p. 193)