THE DRAMA OF THE AGES

Grey River Argus, 18 March 1922, Page 8

THE DRAMA OF THE AGES

AN EARLY MORNING LECTURE. ' ON ORGANIC EVOLUTION. WESTPORT, March 15. This morning at 8 o’clock, Mr 11. E. Holland delivered another address before the Westport watersiders. On this occasion the lecturer dealt with the subject of organic evolution, the title of his address being “The Drama of the Ages.” Mr Woodward presided, and the lecture was followed by those present with the greatest interest. The Far-Flung Fire Unit. The lecturer traced the evolution of the solar system from the far-flung firemist which many hundreds of millions of years ago dissipated itself over thousands of millions of miles of space. He dealt in turn with the sun, the earth, the other planets, the moon, and the fixed stars. The story of the dead worlds floating in eternal blackness, their collisions on the roadways of space, and the new suns that were born in consequence, was told in graphic language, Professor Bickerton’s partial impact theory being woven into the story. The Supreme Drama. “Light years’’ were explained, and the problems of life itself, of light and darkness, and of space were discussed in turn; likewise the stupendous forces which gave shape to suns and worlds, the tornadoes which raged and the titanic energies which convulsed the planet and tore its surface it was yet a molten mass, and the mighty hurricanes which even now sweep around the globe at a height of not less than 20 miles. The theory of the formation of the earth’s crust, the ultimate appearance of the boiling ocean and iD gradual cooling down was presented. The Coming of Life. .The greatest epoch in the ufolding drama was that which marked the beginning of active life upon the planet. Probably it was quite 100 million years since the first forms of life appeared; and probably quite 50,000,000 years passed by ere the tiny specks which first swam unconsciously in the warm waters of the primeval seas developed up to that stage where life was actually expressed in sponges, corals, and worms. Other millions of years fell back into the abyss of Time, and then came the period of insect development. Still other millions of years, and th? fishes appeared. *•

Driven Landward. Great mountain chains arose, and gradually the continents began to emerge, and with this emergence cf the land and the consequent creation of the inland seas and lakes, tin struggle for existence in the waters became titanic, and adaptation to land life became a matter of stern inevitability. Driven landward, the fishes developed lungs for breathing air; they walked on their fins; the fins developed into legs; and thus began that new colony of land dwellers that was destined to culminate in man. The Coming of Coal. For long millions of years the sun went swinging on its way, bringing the carboniferous period and with it the huge reptiles that went creeping through the vast primeval forests whose giant growths were drawing down the stifling carbon dioxide, and thus making life easier for the airbreathing animals, and which forests were in the course of ages to be submerged and form the coal measures of the Old World, as well as the coal measures that have since been heaved upward to the mountain heights on the West Coast of New Zealand or sunk to enormous depths as in the case of the coal measures of New South Wales which fall 3000 feet beneath Sydney and lift to the surface in Mitland and Illawarra.

Stored-up Sun-flame. It was the stored-up sun-flame the miners released when, from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 years later, they brought I the coal to the surface to light all the cities, to link up the land distances with railways, to send the great steam boats thrashing and throbbing across the oceans and thus to bring the uttermost ends of the earth together, and to start all the wheels of the world’s great machinery of production revolv-ing—-and incidentally to write the blood-stained histories of Brunner and Kaitangata and Iluntly in New Zealand and a thousand other such tragedies elsewhere. “Museum of Living Antiquities.’’ Australia —with its platypus of today, representing the link between the bird and the animal; its kangaroo elephant and kangaroo lion of a bygone day; its great horned lizard, its six feet long opossum, and its huge native bear, and other prehistoric creatures—had been aptly named the “museum of living antiquities.’’ The Jurassic Period gave to the world the crab, the crocodile, and the flying reptiles; also the mighty land reptiles of from 20 to 100 feet in length, some of which hjjid left “footprints on the sands of time” covering a square yard. These were followed by the birds with teeth and the bony fishes; and the “white walls of England’’—the chalk cliffs of Dover —and the limestone formations arose. The builders of the chalk cliffs and limestone were tiny animals, mere slime specks, which collected the lime from the water, developed shells of lime, and dying gave to England her hills and cliffs of chalk. The Lemurs. In the Tertiary Epoch came the Lc-

murs, and after them the anthropoid apes. There were few zoologists who would question the evolution of man from an early lemur-like ancestor. To this epoch also belonged the progenitor of the horse—the five-toed Eohippus, little larger than a fox. The Eohippus was succeeded in turn by the fourtoed Orohippus, the three-toed Auchertherum, the Hipparion with two toes receding, and finally the horse with one toe and only the vanishing rudiments of the others. Somewhere in the later period of the Tetiary Epoch the apeman appeared—the creature that was neither man nor brute, but had the attributes of both and possessed the first faint glimmerings of reason. The Brute Man. It was probably 1,000,000 years since the brute-man first stood erect. Threequarters of a ‘million or more years later—say from 120,000 to 200,000 years ago—the Neanderthal Man was “still a thick-set, stunted being, far below the level of our existing savage races, with no home, no (jlothing, no arrows or hafted weapons, roughly chipping his flints to a cutting edge, and beginning to live in small social groups, apparently without cither language, marriage or religion. Since that day his eyes had been turned towards the mountain peaks of civilisation and his feet had been tending thitherward. With the Sunlight in His Eyes. Tlie story of his social evolution, his oft-repeated submersion in the floodwaters of a psychology that flowed from the forgotten ages of his cave existence, his frequent reversions to the rule of the club and the fang—these must form the subject of another lecture. “To-day,” said the lecturer, “man stands with the sunlight of the Twentieth Century in his eyes. In a hundred million years, as some one has well remarked, the slime speck has become a philosopher, the protoplasmic globule an intellectual giant.” The lecturer was warmly applauded, and a hearty vote of thanks by acclamation brought the proceedings to a close, Mr Holland promising to lecture again next week on Social Evolution.