OUR ANCESTOR THE APE.

NZ Truth, Issue 245, 5 March 1910, Page 4

OUR ANCESTOR THE APE.

An imaginative scnoclhoy once described "the devil and all his worts" aats t "the devil and his inside." Be that as it may, the prevailing custom of teaching the elements of anatomy at our schools does not meet with universal approbation. Most of our teachers have heard of the teacher who received at the hands of one young hopeful a note from a parent •worded as follows : — "tPlease don't teach my Johnny no more about his innards. It don't do 'im no good ; besides, it's rude." Such out-of-date individuals as the probably mythical parent referred to, actually exist m New Zealand, and at least one has been discovered m Hawke's Bay district. According to reports to hand, this person, one Tanner, objects to the teaching of Darwin's "Origin oi Species," and the anatomical structure of the now historic and ultra-fashionable vermiform appendix,, m one of the schools m that educational district. About half a century behind the times, he gravely gives notice of a motion to ask the chief inspector 'whether lie approves oi such teaching. Probably he considers the evolutionary theory as calculated to do no one "no good," and a Knowledge of the appendix as "rude."