Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1908-06-24
A DEBATE ON
 PRIMITIVE MAN.

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 gin and the savage traits he transmit ted to his descendants, that he had nc eyes ears or any other perceptivc or l gans for anything else. Indeed, he was more familiar with the gibbon orang outang, chimpanzee and gorilla mans nearest relatives, than the mem bers of his own family. Absorbed in dreams of these kinsmen he would | pass his own children on the street without recognizing them.
 Kate Edmonds alone of all his chil- dren sympathized with him in his studies and was consequently his fa- yorite. Kate worshiped her father, and it is questionable if her enthusi. asm for fossils was not assumed for the purpose of pleasing the dear old man. At any rate, when she was eleven years old her mother met her one morning on the street with neck lace of bones around her neck and or. dered her to go home and take off "the horrid' thing.
 As Kate grew older she joined her father in his studies and on one occa. sion delighted him by discovering a similarity in the big toe bone of two animals which he had previously con sidered to belong to different species. From this time forth he made her an assistant instead of a pupil, and she worked with him continuously.
 But, unfortunately for her father, Kate became woman. Not that the professor noticed a change which oc- cured in a brief season. He took no note of changes except those that only ages could effect. When Kate took his hand and told him that she was about to be married he was thunderstruck What have you done with your do'l:., he moaned
 Kate went with her husband to live in a distant city. For brief season after her departure the professors bones failed to interest him. Then some one sent him a bone of an ami. maj unlike anything he had ever seen. and straightway the old man forgot his daughter in his efforts to construct the creature of which it had been a part. After that the only evidence that he remembered her at all was occa- sional inquiries why she was not in her seat at table.
 At the end of year Kate wrote her mother that she was coming home for a visit, but asked her not to inform her father, since she wished to sur prise him. Kate arrived at the com. mencement season and at the hour when the president was holding a re- ception, with Professor Edmonds in attendance. So Kate arrayed herself in reception costume, went over to the president and, taking position behind a portiere in room adjoining the one where her father was, began to talk prehistoric man in his hearing.
 "Upon my word," said the professor. "there is lady in there who knows more about the tertiary period than any woman l have ever heard talk But she is making one egregious blum der Introduce me to her.
 The professor was introduced to his daughter, but whether he had forgot ten her entirely or was too deeply en- crossed in his subject to recognize her or had on his reading instead of his distance glasses doesn't matter. He plunged right into the work of cor recting her error.
 II heard you say, madam" he began, that evidences of the existence of mans progenitors are not found in the tertiary period. During the eocine sys- tenn, a division of the tertiary, several orders of mammals were developed including the ancestors of lemurs monkeys, anthropoid or manlike apes.
 But these are only the germs, so to speak, not man himself, Kate replied
 There is no beginning. no stop ill development. The anthropoid apes are simply continuation in the develop ment of man.
 And do you think, professor, that ] man of the present day will develop 1 into something higher?"
 Undoubtedly y-that is. if our planet is not in the meanwhile knocked intr dust or burned by coneussion at meet. ing some one of those opaque bodies known to be p'unging through space.
 Or d comet" said Kate, with a twinkle in her eye.
 Nonsense, madam. Comets are gas eous. The earth has passed through their tails often"
 ITO return to man-man in his par, ent stage of development. What would you think of father who would for i get his own child:''
 Such failure of the faculty of memory would undoubtedly be inher- ited from his brutish ancestors. We have no evidence that lions, tigers. cats dogs and other brutes remember their cubs after they are grown and have passed away from their parents ' 1 Do you refer to man in the present stage-to yourself for instance-as brutal and to your child as cub?'
 By no means. have passed the brute condition, but now and again traits, like rudiments of organs that have ages ago become useless and de- generated, must necessarily crop out"
 But if the parent forgets the child l why not the child forget the parent:" "In the brute state the only use the