Kinship to a Lower Type.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 4124, 22 September 1883, Page 3 (Supplement)

Kinship to a Lower Type.

The early stages of human development and the first beginners, so to speak, of the individual frame, presont to tho eye of science certain very marvellous proofs- of man's kinship with lower life. Away backward in the dim ancestral periods, when the lower types were evincing their special tendencies toward th : evolution of tho " paragon of animals," the evidences of that lower life gradually began lo pale and ta disappear, as: first the pre-human and then the human characters were outlined. Tho. projecting face-bones, still seen to-day as a lingering survival in lower races of men, began to be compressed and concentrated, as tho wink of making the '-human face divine with its overhanging brain proceeded apace. The massive teeth and muscles of lower life were gradually modified to form tho more modest structures ourraeo exhibits to-day, and the erect posture, sustained without an effort, likewise began to be assumed as a special feature of the developing tribes of humanity. Tins much we can sue by the lawful scientific use of tho imagination in the backward glance alone; the lincsof the past, It would appear toth'e eye of the biologist as though ihe human characters had hecn laid over the features of the lower life that preceded (hem -as if the picture of humanity's progress had been painted over and upon the design which tho. cumulative life of the vertebrate had furnished as a foundation for the best and highest work of all. If such a simile holds good, we might expect, in examining closely the latest oil the canvas, that here and there we should obtain a glimpse of the artist's iirstoutlincs, and of theprclimiuary sketches which served for the realisation of the more perfect ideal. As from tho erasures and blots of the finished manuscript to may gain a clue to the genesis of the writer's thoughts, so we may read between the lines of the warp and woop of life, and may detect occasional glimpses of the fashioning of lower types into that of humanity iteeif. The glimpses wo do obtain are often blurred, and indistinct, and their very nature is frequently obscure. But, there "is no doubting the significance of the ancient fingerposts which, half-buried in the mists of antiquity or erased by the busy fingers 01 time, still point the pathway along which man's race has fought and won its way to the supremacy of the animal hosts. —" .Longman's Magazine."