Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1898-09-03
TINE WILL TELL.

Professor Haeckel, in a paper recently
read at the Cambridge Congress 81 Zoo
| logy, nattered the human no
little. and his remarks will a6,--,tless
cause us to reconsider our determination
70 chop up our family tree for frewood.
In tracing our ancestry he carries US
/ back much further than we thought our
| pedigrees, even I'm their most elastic mo-
ment. could possibly stretch. In short,
| he says that we-the genus homo-are
sprung from progenitors who lived q
thousand million years ago. Nor is 1t
mere surmise which prompts him to use
this JUNCTION, for according to him, the
chain Of our title TO prehistoric progeni-
tors IS complete. He says our descent
IS no longer a vague hypothesis, but an
established fact-a fact which is as plain
as that mathematical proposition by
which two and two are proved to make
four. Recent discoveries have brought
him to his present conclusions and by the
aid Of fossils found in Java, NADIA
gascar, and Australia. he has drawn the
deductions Which now offer so much
comfort to us. Nor is our civilization by
any means a parvenu. 1t was ripe in the
days Of Homer-nay. even in the days of
Babylon. and we find evidences of its
quondam existence in almost every
known land.
Hitherto, in Boosting the antiquity Of
our family, we have found ourselves a lit
tie embarrassed when we went back be-
ha al al nj I,,tt H..
has fixed this all right. According TO him |
we are mammalian, and all living and ex-
tinct mammals are from a single common |
ancestral form that lived in the Trias- |
sic period. This respected ancestral form |
was reptilian and our lamented parents |
disported themselves in the days when
coal was being accumulated beneath the |
mountains. And Furthermore, those who |
are dissatisfied with the idea of having /
such "varmints" as progentors are al
lowed by the Professors researches to
go still further back until they find as
their many-times great-grandfather a
certain carboniferous amphibian of the
group stegocephala" and these worthless
IN turn descended from "Devonian fishes,
and these again. from lower vertebrates."
In fact. we can keep on going backwards
ana backwards, careless of a few thou
sand years, until we reach a most vener-
lble relative-"a speck OF amorphous
jelly-like substance not far
removed from mud"
If these old-time kinsfolk were TO drop !
n on US now, we rather fear they would
receive the cold shoulder. for though
bringing with them the ripeness Of a
antiquity, they do not ap-
pear 10 have been particularly genteel.
the "amorphous protoplasm"
,lias 'jelly-like substance not far re-
moved from mud" could hardly expect
o meet a cordial welcome on the spot
ess carpet OF good housewife
But all the same. we are proud Of our
,rogenitors, and happy to know that the
has Strengthened out the whole
natter and that there Is no bar sinister
with our geneaiogy
And still prouder are we at our more
ecent development. Think of the many
tribes which were required to produce ! I
he metamorphosing Of a shapeless pro-
oplasm into a baseball rooter or a sum-
ner girl. Altogether. it is a fine fine
ecord, and is but another Illustration !
{ the maxim: thine will tell" &