Omaha daily bee., 1898-10-23
BIOLOGY And BERlNG SEA
Reporters Talk with David Starr Jordan
Covers Quite Wide Range
MISSING LINKS AND SEALING TREATIES
ProtopIasms Lead Up 10 Sociological
Considerations that Hold the Fore
front in the Relations with Our
Pacific Coast NeIgbbOrs.


Biology has been made a life study by
President David Starr Jordan Of the Leland
Stanford, jr., University of California, and
when his time is not engaged in interna-
tional matters or in moulding the ideas OF
the native son OF the golden west" he is
either writing, lecturing or conversing on
that subject until his name is fast becom-
ing an encyclopedia term with every
scientist Of two continents. Some modern
evolutionists have said that in the case OF
Prof. Jordan at Is the light shining out of
the west even unto the east"
Let ii be understood that he is not
metaphysician-a thing has to be a cold,
hard, demonstrable fact to gain his atten-
tion and all other matters he politely leaves
to the domain of speculative philosophy, to
be groped after by those who like that sort
OF thing. So when you ask him IL he thinks
the evolution OF form has been due to the
evolution of ideation he tells you he
doesn't think" that that is something he
cannot determine, that time may be better
spent on things which can be determined
lie may be considered ultra -materialistc.
He Is the man who beginning where Dar-
win and other great inductionists stopped
supplies the missing links" in the scheme
of evolution, though he modestly dlsclaims
any originality in this; and If so much can
be said for his penetration and analysis his
comprehension, on the other hand, includes
within its vast scope mankind from the
cellular theory to the momentous questions
OF modern internationalism, for the same
principle underlies and the same laws gov
ern cells individuals and nations. he says.
To him nation Is an aggregation OF cells,
as a human body is an aggregation of cells.
The ethics that govern individuals and the
relations that exist between nations are,
therefore, but biology on a large scale. This
is why he could lecture at the liberal con-
gress as easily against Imperialism as he can
outline the various methods of cellular re-
production to the fresh, young Californian
tyro who is to become the intellectual CO.
lossus of the future, or conjure up the
missing links" in stupendous scheme of
animated development and differentiation
TO an audience Of stald church folk.
Prof. Jordan talks differently from other
men. He lust gives it to you in an Off
handed way as though 1t were all matter
ot-fact and there were nothing startling at
all about 1t. This is the attitude of a posi-
tive man who feels well sustained by logic
and. principally, facts.
What n Missing Link is Like.
"The missing links between any two
forms" said he at the Delfone the after
non he arrived to participate in the con-
gress. "are not any forms that now exist
but are simply the forms that lie behind
them. Evolution can be compared to the
growth of a tree; if you wanted to find the
points of divergence where the limbs shoot
out from the trunk. the branches from the
limbs and the twigs from the branches, you
would not look for them along level. A
horizontal line drawn across the figure of
a tree would give you lot of parts of limbs
and branches cut off from the rest of the
tree and the converging points would be
lost. To find the points Of convergence you
would rather trace down the twigs, branches
and limbs to their Sc eleral functions, or you
would trace upward from the trunk to where
they all diverge. So with the process of
DEVELOPMENT All the converging points have
been lost in the lapse of time, through the
death of the common progenitors OF any two
or more species and their immediate
progeny. One of the species being more pro-
Eresslve than the others will go on repro
ducing itself on a higher and higher scale,
whilst another TESS progressive will repro
duce on lower scale, and still another on
a still lower scale until we may have three
distinct types radically differing from each
other like the man, the monkey and the
dog The effort OF the evolutionist is to de-
termine by the logical process of induction
and deduction. based upon certain materials
found in fossilzed remains or in existing
forms and by following certain points OF
similarity where the different genera and
species converged and how they diverged,
conceiving Of all animated and all organ
ICED life as having been of one general
growth.
"Now for examples: If you are looking
for the missing link between the horse and
the COW it wouldn't be a horned horse or a
horse that chews cud, but 1t would be
some simple herbivorous, ive-toed animal
that would show none OF the peculiaritles of
horse or COW, but would have qualities
that could be made over into these. Such
an animal exists in the fossil shape in the
bad lands OF Dakota, and it may be COM
pared in its makeup to the embryo OF
both horse and COW, taken at an early
stage before the peculiarites appear. OF
course you have heard of this. Il is the
coryphodonl, the flve-toed mammal. Then we
fnd the oreodonl In the tertiary formation
of the Rocky mountains, a mammal which
would seem to have been allied in many
respects to the hog, the camel and the deer.
We find fossil forms in India and the island
of Java which lie behind man on the one
hand and the chimpanzee tribe on the other.
We could imagine them as being possible
ancestors for both because they are Just
as near one as the other. They are not
directly between man and the ape, but are
behind both the human and the sinian
forms, so that they could easily have given
rise to either. Science calls them the plthe-
canthropus, or man-ape. AS to their form
they are only known as bones but, roughly
considered as put together, they constitute
simple structure as OF a human ape, sup
posed to have been upright Whether they
were quadrumanae or not We cannot tell"
And did they have tails?" was asked.
"No, they had no tails. For that matter