EVOLUTION-OP MAN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 4, 5 July 1910, Page 9

EVOLUTION -OP MAN.

MR. M'CABE'S LECTURE.

I Some hundreds of people had to be turned away from the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall last evening, on the occasion of Mr. Joseph M'Cabe's third lecture — "The Evolution of Man." Mr. M'Cabe, who was greeted with ■ hearty applause, said that everybody was now familiar with the fact that strange animal variations had succeeded one another on the earth. Ten million years ago our earth was a fragment, flung out at intense heat from the flanks of the forming sun, its temperature, perhaps, from 5000 to 10,000 degrees, with no life whatever on it. By and by the earth cooled, vast oceans were formed, and living things came into the waters. We were not sufficient- ! ly advanced in science yet to deal adequately with the problem of life. The speaker quoted Professor Armstrong, however, to the effect that we now had so perfect a mastery of scientific methods of investigation that we might presently begin to speculate on the origin of living things. In the opinion of the professor, a series of lucky accidents may have accounted for the presence of life ; winds impregnated with chemicals might have brought about the first appearance of life on this planet. In the earlier days it was highly probable that life commenced in the water, in the form of minute organisms. Gradually these microbes clung into clusters, to form more complicated structures; out of these, worms, lobsters, and fish were formed, and, as the land formed from the ocean, reptiles, bir,ds, and mammals. The main clue to the development of life-forms was the succession of cold to tropical heat, and this cold had provided the stimulus to changes. The truth of evolution was now established beyond question ; in fact, man as found to-day cannot be understood unless he was regarded as the culmination and product of a long line of ancestry. PRIMITIVE STRUCTURES. A number of beautiful and highly instructive pictures and diagrams were thrown on the screen', some showing the structure of various parts of the human frame ; others the life-forms and the conditions of the earth's surface millions of years ago. Attached to the ear, said the lecturer, were seven muscles ; of which no human being could use all ; but in far-off days our ancestors used them to draw the ear to and fro. A little fleshy pad in the eye was the vestige of a functioning body in our fish ancestors ten or fifteen million years ago ; hair on the human body was but the degenerate relic of the coverings on ape-like ancestors. Reference was made to well-developed breasts in the male, many cases being known in which the father stickled the babe, and this pointed to a time when labour was divided ; the vermiform appendix was the vestigial remains of a body which had a function among vegetarian ancestors. Views of the developing human face were shown ; in the embyro the heart was two-chambered, as in the fish, until ib sank from its early position right up in the neck down into tho chest and became four-chambered. MUSEUM OF RELICS. In fact, said Mr. M'Cabe, the human body to-day is one vast museum of evolutionary relics. In the earliest times worms threw off their skin and developed into lobsters; lobsters changed into fishes in the depth of tho primeval ocean. A remarkable fact about the fishes was their possession of a lung as well as gills, and the gradual upheaval of the land enabled them to live in water or on shore. There were in this part of the world to-day many fishes that can live quite comfortably out of water. A certain fish in India, when its pool of water dries up, can walk alon^ until it finds another pool to its liking; and similar fishes are also to be seen in Egypt, South America, and Queensland. These formed an interesting link between fish and animal life. The formation of the present surface of the earth, said the lecturer, was due largely to the action of rivers in bringing down millions of tons of solid matter to the ocean bed ; the pressure of this, acting on the earth's crust, caused the upheaval? of mountain ranges. Later a hot period reverted, the land tank again, and but for this fact, civilisation would probably be a million or so years ahead of what it is. An the earth cooled again, vast - glaciers appeared, and scooped out lakes and valleys. Colossal masses of iee — in Norway 10,000 feet thick — covered mosi of Europe and North America. "DRAGONS OF THE PRIME." Some of the finest pictures thrown on the screen were beautifully coloured "restorations" of the primeval forests — dank and luxuriant — which by absorbing immense quantities of carbon from tho air, were able to provide the coal-beds of modern times, after being burned through long ages. Over the present sites of London and Paris roamed huge reptiles and strange monsters — some weighing 90 tons, sixty feet long, with footprints a yard square. The '"dragons of the prime, that tear each other in their slime" made the riotous beauty of the forest more strange. Out of reptiles, birds were evolved, and the first bird was half-lizard. Animals that developed their shells into fur or feathers had the> advantage; it was a case of survival of the fittest ; and bird and mammal advanced in response to the revolution in temperature that overcame the earth. The huge reptiles died from the cold; this enabled smaller animals such as man to appear. • Tho final views displayed were some high types of the ape family and low types of man. No ape found to-day was in line with man's ancestry; man and ape came from a common ancestor 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 years ago. Half a million years was required for the highest ape to become like the ape-like man of Java; another half-million for the brutish Javan to develop into the lowest savage we know. "If, during these past ages," concluded tho lecturer, "man has risen from so low a level to so high a level, and if during recent years evolution has gone- tenfold faster than before, consider what a consoling vista of future progress this doctrine of evolution offers to every social , thinker of our time." Mr. M'Cabe will give tho final lecture in the series at the Town Hall this evening, when his subject will be "The Evolution of Morality and Civilisation."