PROGRESSIVE SOCIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 12866, 16 July 1906, Page 4

PROGRESSIVE SOCIETY.

A large audience assembled in the Trades Hall last evening, when Mr G. A. Rawson delivered a lecture, illustrated by thirtyfour lantern slides, entitled ‘I lie Chief Structural Affinities of Man and the Anthropoid Apes.’ The evolutionary significance of these structural affinities was forcibly demonstrated. The first section of the lecture was devoted to embryology. Eight slides were shown in connection with Hiis section. The development of a human being from a fertilised ovum, through the microscopic morula, blastula, and gastrula stages to a fairly advanced foetal stage was sketched. Particular attention was drawn to the gill-clefts and arches common to all embryos, human included, at an early fcetal stage. These could only be explained as a relic of our fish ancestors, recapitulated with such persistency by heredity. Haeckel’s gastraea theory, and the importance of the biogcnctic law, which postulates that ontogenesis, or the evolution of the foetus, is a more or less complete recapitulation of phylogenesis, or the evolution of the race or stem, wore forcibly demonstrated. Then rudimentary structures were dealt with. A series of elides depicted the rudimentary muscles in the human ear; Darwin’s point on the human car; the perforation of the humerus in man and apes (supra-condyloid foramen); and the nictitating membrane in the eyes of an owl, horse, ape, and man. The microcephalous idiots were cited as instances of atavism, or reversion to a remote ancestral type. The hyoid bone in the neck, to which the tongue was attached, the lecturer described as the remnant of the gill-supporting apparatus in fishes. These rudimentary structures, the lecturer said, formed an impassable barrier to the upholder of the obsolete dogma of special creation. 'Objectors had carped and cavilled at them, but they had never been able to explain them satisfactorily on any other hypothesis. On the other hand, they were precisely what the evolutionist expected to meet with. The second section was devoted to comparative anatomy. Mr Rawson described tho various groups of apes, and explained their divisional classification. The anatomical analogies between man and the giant gorilla of tho Carneroons were well illustrated by a strikingly graphic slide, taken from the plate on this subject in Haeckel’s ‘ Evolution of Man.’ It was shown how, bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, the skeletons corresponded. The authority lor this statement was Haeckel. Tlks restored skull of Pithecanthropus Erectus was depicted, and tho affinities of man to this creature were described. If there was such a thing as a “missing link,” this animal seemed to be it. An interesting slide depicting the comparative size of fossil skulk, was shown, and it was demonstrated how the Cro-Magnon, Neandertharl, and Pithecanthropus skull, in the order of their seniority, approximated more and more to the ape type. The lecturer dealt rather fully with the structural resemblances between the human and anthropod brains. An interesting series of slides depicted the marvellous resemblance existing in the majority of cases. They could not be expected to agree perfectly,,, or The mental powers of man and apes would be the same. _ But it was shown that in weight of brain the difference between the savage and the civilised man was fap greater than that between the savage and the highest ape. Other anatomical facts, many of which were discussed, and slides shown depicting them, corroborated the deliberate dictum of Professor Huxley, who was one of the highest authorities on this subject, that “whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result—that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.” Portraits of Darwin and Dr A. R. Wallace, with brief biographical sketches, were given. Owing to the exhaustion of the acetylene in the lantern at this stage, two portraits of Haeckel and Huxley could not be shown, but the lecturer gave a biographical sketch of each, and an interesting and instructive lecture terminated by Mr Rawson quoting the famous passages from the final portions of the first and last chapters of Darwin’s ‘ Descent of Man.’