The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-09-04
THERE Is NO MISSING LINK.
Prof. HaeckeDs Great Paper Read at
Cambridge.
From the New York Sun.

From the New York sun.
| London, Aug. 27.-Two international
bodies sitting during the current week dis
cussed subjects of general interest One
is the Cambridge Congress of Zoology.
which will be remarkable for a fascinaI-
ing paper by Prof. Haeckel on the present
| knowledge of the descent of man. He
! does not hesitate to declare that science
| has now established the absolute certain
ty that man has descended through varl-
Gus stages of evolution from the lowest
form of animal life during a period esti-
mated at thousand million years. La
marck, Darwin and finally scores of other
| investigators won the knowledge which
must now be accepted as the browning
achievement of science during the nine
tenth century.
Recent discoveries of fossil remains in
Java, Madagascar, and Australia have
made still more complete the evidence,
| available proof, and discoveries wherewith
Darwin's name is most commonly asso-
ciated. Prof. Haeckel thus summarized
the steps in evolution:
THE monophylettc origin of all man.
maha-that is to say, their origin from
one common parent form, from monotre-
mata upward to man-is no longer a vague
| hypothesis, but an established fact. All
the living and extinct mammalia which
we know are descended from a single COM
mon ancestral form which lived in the
TriaSsic or Permian period and this form
must be derived from some permian or
perhaps carboniferouS reptile allied to the
BrOpONOS9lFia xxybio Io
was derived from a carboniferous ampEi-
hian of the group Stegocephala. These am
phibians in turn descend from Devonian
fishes, and these again from lower Yerte-
brates. The most important fact is that
man is a primate, and that all primat5s--
lemurs, monkeys anthropoid apes and man
descended from one common stem. Look
ing forward to the twentieth century, 1
am convinced it will universally accept
our theory of descent. have no doubt
that the strong influence of anthropogeny
upon other branches of science viii be
most fruitful"
member of the congress said that Prof.
Haeckel had spoken of one thousand mill
lion years as necessary for his evolution
tree, while Lord Kelvin supposed himself
to have proved that this world as the
scene of life could not be more than TWEEN
ty-five million years old. 1t seemed unwise
to complicate Prof. Haeckefs theory by
would be required for proof.
Prof. Haeckel replied that the computa-
ton was not his own. He took the time
from one of the most eminent biologists.
For himsef he confessed that he had no
intuition as to the length of time required
for the evolution.
The congress received and discussed
Prof. Haeckels paper with the greatest
enthusiasm.
The other meeting was the institute of
international law at The Hague, which was
attended by most of the eminent authori-
ties in Europe, but the United States was
not represented. The proceedings were un-
der the obvious shadow of the clouds in
the International sky. President de Beau
fort, the Dutch foreign minister, pointed
out the existing contrast between the sym
pathy felt for all efforts to bring the ma
tons into harmony and the actual prac-
tice which tends to separate and isolate
them. 1t could not be denied, he said, that
the desire shown by almost all states to
render themselves Independent of their
neighbors and insure monopolies to do
nestle industries and agriculture by as
far as possible excluding foreign products,
did not tally with those sentiments of sol
idarity which make agreement among peo-
pies on different points possible. But what
was still more serious and affected the OBJ
jects of such bodies as the institute more
materially was the feverish DEVELOPMENT
Among an civilized ndllOnS OF their arma-
ments. Military and naval budgets had be-
come the nightmare of ministers of
finance. While the last twenty-five years
had been to a certain extent a period of
peace, armies and fleets had grown out of
all proportion TO those of the beginning of
the century when war was Eordre du jour-
The friends of peace regarded with anX-
iety these immense armies and these gil
gantic arsenals filed with engines of de-
struction. We were told that they were a
pledge of peace, but, in any case these
means of defense, developed to such de-
gree of perfection, denoted a feeling of
mutual distrust and showed that the fear
of violent solutions intensely occupied
mems minds Events in the last few
months had afforded an unwelcome GER
tainty that this fear is only too well found
ed. The recent war had been painful sur
prise for all statesmen and great discour-
agement for the institute. The speaker
nevertheless found consolation in the fact
that both the United States and Spain.
though not parties to the declaration of
Paris, had observed its rules.