St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1897-04-10
PREHISTORIC MAN.
L0ver Races Are SuFvivals Of Inter.
mcdiafy Links.

Lower Races Are Survivals Of Inter.
mcaiary Links.
At the recent meeting of the Royal
society in Edinburg. DR.. Munro read 4
paper on intermediary links between
man and the lower animals. He main
lained that by the attainment of tine
erect posture and the consequent con-
version of the limbs into hands and
feet, man became homo sapiens and in
auguratel q new phase OF existence. by
means of which the manipulative
organs became correlated with the pro-
gressive development of the brain. In
the evolutionary career of man two
stages were therefore to be recognized.
First, that during which his physical
transformation mad been effected, SO as
to adapt him to bipedal locomotion;
second, that during which his mental
organization had become a new gov
erning force in the universe. The one,
being readily effected according to the
laws of morphological adaptation, had
. short duration. The other, an ex-
tremely slow process, consisted of small
increments to his knowledge, acquired
by repeated experiences, and reasoning
from causes to effects and from means
to ends. The one was merely an adjust
ment of physical contrivances to physi-
cal ends, comparable TO that by which
the bird. the bat or the whale had con-
verted its limbs to their special pur-
poses. The other had to be relegated
TO the mystic laboratory where thought
was converted into its material equiv
alent in the form of increased brain sub
stance.
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. Itwas also prob
able that this transformation took place
in a limited area, SO that the chances of
finding the intermediary links of this
stage were very small. On the other
hand, the probability of finding erect
beings with skulls in oil grades of de-
velopment, from slightly changed
simian type up to that of civilized man.
was enormously greater. He regarded
the erect posture as the most conspic-
uous line of demarkation between man
and the lower animals. From this
standpoint the Java skeleton would
come under the category of human; but
il this line of distinction was to be de-
pendent in any degree on mental
phenomena DIR. Dubois was perfectly
justified in regarding it as transit
tional form, because it was Il long time
after the attainment of the erect ros-
ture before his religious. moral and in
tellectual faculties became human char
DIR. Munro believed that many fossil
of man were intermediary links
which marked different stages in the
history of mankind. and the further
back such Investigations carried them
the more simianlike did the brain case
become. If the geological horizon OF
the Java man was correctly defined as
the border land between the Pliocsne
and Quaternary periods they could form
some idea how far back they had to
travel to reach the common stock from
which men and anthropoid animals had
sprung. The lower races of to-day were
also survivals of intermediary links
which had been thrown into the side
eddies of the great stream of evolution.