Evening star., 1935-04-16
STARS, MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Progress in Field,
Laboratory and Study.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

Double" and "redouble" is Mother
Natures way in playing the game of
evolution.
Such. at least, has been the story
of brain evolution eliminating in man,
according to Prof. Eugene Dubois, dis
coverer of the remains of Pithecan-
thropus erectus. earliest known of the
pre- humans, more than 30 years ago.
His conclusions are contained in the
proceedings of the recent Interna-
tional Congress of Anthropology and
Ethnology in London Application
Throughout the animal kingdom Of
Prof. Dubois own "coeficient of
capitalization" he reports, leads to the
discovery of a hitherto unsuSpected
biological law of cephalic progress.
This "coefficient of capitalization" is
the average brain weight of a species
or genus divided by flve-ninths the
average body weight. AS one goes
upward in the animal kingdom this
figure advances by four-fold or two
fold jumps, without any intermedi-
aries. Between distintly related forms
the jumps are four fold. Thus the CO.
efficient for man is four times that Of
such manlike apes as the gorilla,
chimpanZee and orang-utan. That OF
the apes in turn is four-fold that OF
the tiger, the cat, the buffalo and the
goat These, in their turn. have quad
ruple the capitalization of the mouse
and the rat The law, Prof. Dubois
says, also has been confirmed by him.
self and other workers for the birds,
reptiles and fishes.
The progression is by discrete jumps
of equal distance, not by minute ad-
vanceS.
But when it comes to closely related
animals Nature stops redoubling and
starts doubling. Thus, Prof. Dubois
measurements show, the brain coeff1-
cient for the primitive kanchil, an
archaic East Indian representative OF
the deer family, is exactly one-half
that of ruminantS in general. Like
wise the polecat, the Stoat and the
weasel have almost exactly half the
capitalization of the marten. The
coefficient for the pigmy hippopotamus
is twice that of the large hippopot-
anus, that of the squirrel twice that
of the marmot and that of the mole
twice that of the shrew. The extinct
procameluS, equal in size and similar
in form to llama, which is its acknowl-
edged descendant, possessed only half
its brain volume. The common insec-
tivorous bats have half the brain CO.
efficienct of the leaf-nosed bats of
South America and these, in turn,
have only half that of the East Indian
flying foxes.
BY applying this co-eficient, Prof.
Dubois claims, the relative position of
an animal in the scale of brain evolu-
tion can be determined. But there is
one gap between the cephalic co-eftl-
cient of creatures admittedly closely
related-man and the great apes.
There is a fourfold instead of two
fold gap. Was this a case where
natured arbitrarily redoubled when
she should only have doubled.
Here Prof. Dubois turns to his own
particular speciality, Pithecanthropus.
Calculating from the available bones
and skull the probable body and brain
weights of this curious animal, he
finds that the co-efficient turns out
exactly twice that of the apes and
exactly half that of mankind.
"In that sense only" Prof. Dubois
says, "Pithecanthropus doubtless was
the missing link, and the immediate
precursor of man. In other respects
he was not particularly advanced in
relation to the great apes. He ap-
parently was no nearer the acquisition
of speech than they and no nearer
the ability to walk upright"
This doubling and redoubling proc
ess, Prof. Dubois says arises from the