Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1920-12-09
Searching For the Missing Link.

ferrous relatives, the gorilla, the orang
and the chimpanzee, is by no means a
simple affair. Rather it is matter of
refined diplomacy, of fluent linguistics,
skilled engineering, deep scientific
and historical knowledge and hard and
patient work, according to Roy Chap
man Andrews and Walter Granger,
botanist and paleonplogist respective
| ~ for the American Museum Of Nat
ural history.
These two men are in charge of
plans for the most pretentious expedi-
ton into ancient times ever planned.
Together with biologists, archeolo-
gists, biologists, anthropologists, and
various other kinds of scientific in
vestigators, they expect to sail from
San Francisco February |, 1921. Their
destination is rather indefinite point
in chronology, which we may place
roughly at 100000 years B. c.
The entire expedition plans to make
the round trip to the far-ago era with
in five years. Somewhere in the sub
soil Of half million years ago, the
psychologists hope to find the physi
cal remains Of our more or less dis
reputable antecedents.
Remnants Of our ancestors in the
shape Of strap molar or twO, a petri
fled cheek, and a WORKOUT jawbone or
so, are to be brought back and placed
in the Asiatic Building of the museum
in New York. There these revered
relics will be mounted and placed where
Americans who dote on ancestors may
come and worship.
Chief among the objects sought is
the missing Link" which modern
scientists believe spans the interval be-
tween man-like monkeys and monkey
like men. Whether the Third Asiatic
Expedition, as the prospectors for old
Adam are to be called, finds the re-
mains Of the highly civilized ape, the
least civilized man. or the being in
which monkey and man divide fifty
fifty, the members expect important
discoveries.
The mystery of Central Asia which
the American savants seek to pierce
has always been a fruitful source of
speculation. To dissolve this mystery,
even the most modern portion of it, is
a serious task. To attempt to read the
record of the ages which Nature has
sought to conceal by upheavals of
strata, by glacial scrapings, and by
shifting sands, is a proceeding against
which even the spirits of heather
gods fight through the superstitious
minds Of native idolaters.
But the mystery, in both its modern
and ancient aspects, the members Of
the expedition propose to solve. And
they expect to bring back to America a
collection of Central Asiatis discov-
cries which will make the American
Museum the repository for the largest
number Of concrete bits of Asiatic
knowledge in the world. Specimens of
the present-day fauna and flora Of I'll
bet and Mongolia, together with fossil
remains of the obsolete animals which
roamed the district science has accept
ed as the birthplace of the human race
are among the relics sought.
The expedition is being financed by
]. P. Morgan, George F. Baker, w. A.
Hartman, and several other wealthy
patrons of the museum.
The personnel which is being ar
ranged by the associate curator of
mammals, MT Andrews, will include
an imposing array of individuals.
There will be linguists able to con-
verse huently with the half-wild, little
known tribes Of interior China, whose
| language partakes more of jerky sys-
tenn of noun designation which was a
characteristic of early races than of
the well-rounded sentence construction
of modern peoples.
Diplomats able to smooth away the
fears and evade the Superstitions of
tn .range races are among the
| important members of the party.
The hill tribes and plaInsmen of in
terror China in themselves are studies
which will adequately satisfy the
desires of the expedition Little is
known of the living natives of Asia
The remnants of about 80 odd tribes
are disappearing, yet almost nothing is
known OF their origin. One of these
races, the Lolos, contains physiog-
nomical traits akin to those of the
Caucasians.
Should the linguistic and diploma
tistic skill of the expedition be suf-
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