THE OLDEST RACE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11656, 11 June 1912, Page 2

THE OLDEST RACE.

GERMAN SCIENTISTS' TEST. WHO IS NEAREST THE APE? An attempt Ls to be made at the Imperial Research Laboratory at Munich to deteimine, by biood-precipitin experiments, which of the living races bears the closest blood relationship to the ape. Should the experiment succeed it will settle many perplexing problems of science and may revolutionise the theories of evolutionists as well as theologians. . A.5 the case now stands there is general agreement among scientists that man and the'ape are descended from a common a.ncesto.t; but as. to whether the black, the white, the red, or the yellow man, the pigmy, the giant, or the med-ium-sized man, was tlie original human type, there are strong differences -of opinion. One body of theorists holds •that the negro is a degenerated white type, while another insists that the white man is evolved from an ancientblack tvpe. To apply the biood-precipitin tests to the settlement of this problem it will be necessary only to advance a- few steps further en experiments made by Prof. Nutta.ll, of the TJnive.rsity of Cambridge, England. Sir Ray Lankester gives the following account of these experiments: — ''When into the blood of a. live rabbit a small quantity of the blood or liqtrd serum separated from the blood clot of a man is introduced, by injection in several doses separated by a. day or two's interval, the blord of the rabbit acquires a peculiar property. if the rabbit be killed and some of its blood be allowed to coagulate, the serum, or pahliquid part of the blood., may be collected and preserved in glass bulbs for expel' -men t. "It is now found that if a teaspoonfui of a clear, transparent dilution of human blood., prepared either from fresh or from dried blood, be put in a. test tube, and some of the prepared labbit serum is poured into it, a milky appearance is produced' where the two liquids meet, and as they mix the whole of the mixed liquid becomes clouded. The particles causing the cloudiness gradually collect together and sink to the bottom of the tube as a precipitateNow, if .scrum from a rabbit not treated by an injection of human blood or serum be poured' into a tube holding a siiecimen tr the dilute human blood, such as yielded' the precipitate when mixed with the 'humanised' rabbit scrum, there will' he no precipitate at all. "Thus we prove that there is something present in. the blood o>: the "humanised" rabbit which causes the precipitate and which >s not present in. the blood of the unprepared rabbit. What is this precipitin? Is it the human blocd itself, with which the first rabbit was prepared, which simply brings it the- precipitin? Not at all, as we show by pouring serum from ordinary human blood clot into a tube to dilute, human blood. No precipitate is formed. It is. therefore,, clear that the introduction of human blood into the living body of the first rabbit has set up a change in that animal's blood, resulting in the formation of a substance having the power to cause a milkiness or precipitation in dilute human serum. There is little doubt that —as in the production of anti-tox ; n —the precipitin is manufactured in the rabbit's blood by a chemical change of bodies present in the injected human blood and in its own blood.

"The strangest thing about it nil is that the precipitin in the bo rum cf the blood of the humanised l rabbit will not cause a cloudiness in 'diluted dog's blood nor in that of cattle, sheep, or, in fact, in that of any other animal except man and; his nearest 'blood' relations' among animals—namely, the apes and monkevs." It is found to he possible to compare the degree of precipitation or cloudineis in different examples. In other v.e:ds. those who have made and are making the experiments, claim that it is proved by tlie experiments that the blond o'f the chimpanzee and l the orangoutang, when tested with the humanised precipitin holding rabbit's blood,

give a precipitate nearly as great as does that of man, while the common 01"nn grinder's monkey—the macaque— Sives'a'good' deal less. The South American monkeys—which differ in the number of their teeth and in their prehensile tads from man and the Old "VV-osld monkeys—give only the merest traces of precipitin. The lemurs give no precipitin .at all.