THE MISSING LINK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1240, 4 September 1875, Page 3

THE MISSING LINK.

If we are to believe (says Iron) a report from the Madras Presidency, one at least of the missing links between the anthro pomorphous apes and Homo sapiens has at last turned up, a Mi- Bond, an Indian surveyor, having, it is said, secured two specimens of a race possessing some very simian characteristics, who inhabit the hill jungles of the Western Ghats, living chiefly on roots and honey, and being without fixed dwelling - places. They have, however, civilised tendencies, for they exchange honey, wax, and other produce of their forest haunts, for tobacco as well as for cloth and rice. The diagnosis of this remarkable and primitive type of humanity is very interesting. The forehead is low and retreating, and the lower part of the face projecting like the muzzle of a monkey ; the legs are shorti and bandy, while the body and arms are comparatively long. The most striking character is in the hands, which, with the lingers, are contracted so that they cannot be stretched out flat ; the palms and fingers, more especially the tips of the latter, are covered with thick skin, the nails being small and impi'rleut, while the feet are broad and covered on the upper as well as the lower BUif.ice with thick akin. These people are not without religion, practising, apparently, a species of nature worship. Tho mountains of Jndia harbour several very ancient races, who have there found a refuge from the successive waves of invasion which, as in tho case of Italy, have swept over the peninsula fivin prehistoric periods, and whose strangu and primitive customs awl habits have already thrown light upon important ethnological problems.