The States and Union. [volume] (Ashland, Ohio) 1868-1872, 1871-04-12
More About Our Monkey Mothers.

lecture of his course upon the question
of the day-the origin of our species.
There was q good attendance, even
larger than upon his preceding lee
lures there, anu every manifestation OF
interest, both in the subject and the
manner in which it was treated by the
lecturer. Prof. Cunning began with
a sentiment from the Duke of Argyle,
that the pro less of creation must APP
pear to human appreheusions as a pro-
cess of law nature must appear as
self-acting the world of matter must
veil the world of mind. Astronomers
were the first to see this biologists
are beginning to see it. In few words
the lecturer sketched the nebular the
Dry and the earliest attempts to find
law at the beginning Of the organic
kingdom. lie passed then to the pres
ent phases of the problem. Sponta-
neous generation is still in controversy.
The speaker stood with Owen and Wy
man, and thought that living things
come into nature by that mode of gen
esis. The animacular world. then,
would give us a warrant for saying
that all forms of life had come by that
mode. But d.. Carpenter had ex-
plored the microscopic world and found
no permanence of forms. What was
called a species glided off in the course
of it's little life into the form of anoth-
er species. The world of atamies,
then, gives you the same warrant for
saying that species have been derived
from other species. The first fish, the
first bird, the first brute originated in
one way or the other, and either way
is divine. The creation of Shakespeare
was a piece of work not one whit less
divine than the creation OF n OF Wy
mans animalcules, although he was
was born of a mother, and the animal
was not. We have nc right to dog
matise, but must Look on the facts
Nature exhibits them in a very tangled
web, but if they teach anything they
teach that nature is not fixed, but
plastic; hat species change, and that
the organic world of o-day is the off
spring OF organisms which lived thro'
the geologic ages. The speaker sketch
ed "the struggle for life" which is
the cost OF life to every living thing,
and showed how this struggle would
modify the form and structure Of ami
mails. The sharper the conflict the
higher would life ascend in the suryi-
vors in general ; hard conditions, or
depraved habits, work retrogression in
man and brute A few wears ago the
| Swiss government published q report
on the natural history of Switzerland.
Two very distinct species of rats were
| pictured and described one was large,
plump and glossy ; the Other was lean,
scrawny and almost bereft of hair
They seemsd two distinct species. In
the second edition of the report the
rats are reduced to one A naturalist
has found how the meaner rat was
made One of its ancestors good,
plump, glossy fellow-had strolled in
to q tobacco warehouse and made his
abode there. He began to nibble
curiosity led him o. he went from
bad to wore /; till you see where he
turned up so unlike for another sre-
cies a warning to all who nibble, and
a ratification" of the views OF MIR
Trask. Instinct is not primal, but
acquired. Ruskin said that he would
SlIuu W 1OIAh dSaihSS iOLSC' liz
speaker would stand by force against
form. Life is more han raiment, and
the body is only a garment which life
weaves day by day for its uses. 1fin-
stincts are acquired, new modes of life
will follow, and new bodily forms and
structures. He illustrated this by
sketching the links between an extinct
beast and the horse ; and argued that
the horse is the old m~egatherium
transformed. Nature did not stop in
long strides, not even when she passed
from animal to man. Professor Agas-
siz has long maintained that differences
between one branch of the human
race and another are specific. If the
Saxon and the Hotteutot came from
one parent stem, then, by Agassiz' ar
gumcnt, the gorilla might have come
from the same stem. Suppose a man
from the audience standing on one o
ner of the platform and a gorilla on
the other? If the question lay be
tween you aud the gorilla, its solution
might not be so difficult. Go to the
coast of Australia and look at the
men and women diving like vultures'
into the rotting carcass OF q whale.
Bring one of these men, smeared with
the reck of rotting whale and place
him between you and the gorilla. Ask
him to eeunt five. He can't do it
And ask him about God. He
had a thought whether there was a
God Ask him to show you his toes.
The gorilla will show you almost the
same. Try the man, the brute-like
man and the man-like brute, by their
anatomy only, their mental endow
ments, and the differences are so great
that if you and the Australian are
from the same stock, You can't slam
the door against the gorilla. Anato-
my brings us either to Agassizism or
Darwinism Which Is true? Forty
years ago Cuvier separated man from
the monkeys on the structure of the
big Toe. Man he called bimana, and
the monkeys quadrumana. He based
mans kingship on his big toe. But
science has found now that the human
foot. in n state of nature. does not diff
fer structurally from the foot of the
gorilla. Owen said, a few years ago,
1--WE will look to the ether end and
base mems kingship on his BRAIN.
"Ah!" he said, cutting into a human
head, "here is Il very little organ with
a very big name, hippocampus minor.
Every nan has a ~hippocampus, but no
monkey has. Well call man archen-
cephalate, and the monkeys we will
clll ~primates."
Then Huxley, who was in the same