EVOLUTION. HAECKEL’S FORGERIES.

Southland Times, Issue 20012, 28 October 1926, Page 11

EVOLUTION. HAECKEL’S FORGERIES.

To the Editor. Sir, —The lie about “Haeckel’s Forgeries” is always on tour. It is übiquitous and comes to light wherever discussions on evolution take place. Fortunately truth is always at. its heels and truth has caught up on it once more here in Invercargill. This falsehood that Haeckel resorted to “faked drawings” and “forged photographs” (whatever this may mean) is part of the stock in trade of all “opponents of evolution.” In the above words your correspondent “P” apparently closes the case for evolution. For the benefit of readers who may not be acquainted with the facts I extract the following form “God—or Gorilla” by Alfred W. McCann, LLD. Professor Osborn knows that the “Propliopthecus Haeckeli” is not only a hypothetical creature, but a very insincere and ridiculous creature, yet Professor Osborn “informing” the school children and their teachers how our immediate ancestors did not live in trees, but how a million years back of them our remote ancestors, pre-human apes, did live in trees, refers in his enlightening panorama of pictorial proof to the “Propliopthecus Haeckeli.” It is admitted that Professor Osborn protects himself, but only against the careful reader, by his use of the word “hypothetical” in describing the “missing link” that bears Haeckel’s name 1 . As a scientist, Professor Osborn mqst know that in palaeontological and zoological matters children are not expected to be super-critical or even careful readers. For them the use of a single word, “hypothetical,” tucked away, as a footnote, in small type, in the midst of terrific plaster busts of apqs, ape-men, sub-men and true men, can create no such graphic and crushing impression as the spectacular series of awesome brutes by whom the one grand impression, the one and only impression, the obviously desired impression is made. What do the school children know of Haeckel and his falsifications? Even Professor Huxley was led for a time to accept them without challenge. Among Haeckel’s frauds is his “Progonotexis Hominis” published in honour of the opening of the new Phyletic Museum at Jena, 1908. In the text all the early races of men are changed into so many species, but on the pedigree of primates they appear again as races not as species. In this large folio he sets against the ancestors of his own invention in the pedigree of man, the same mark that he uses against the fossil forms of extinct primates. The same little cross stands beside both as a sign that both are extinct. Thus his purely imaginary forms are on the same level of dignity with real fossils, deceiving his uncritical reader as to the true value of this fabricated human pedigree. As early as 1868 Rutimeyer, the Swiss geologist, accused Haeckel of tampering with his illustration. In 1874 the anatomist, Anton His of Leipzig, proved the charges of tampering to be irrefutable. In these frauds Haeckel caused the same plate to be printed three times in his “History of Creation,” declaring that the illustrations represented three distinct objects extremely like one another. In 1906 the charges of Professor Arnold Brass published as “Ernst Haeckel als Biologe und die Wahrheit” against Haeckel’s tampering with the illustrations of embryos attracted tremendous attention in Germany. Again, April 1, 1908, in an address delivered at a meeting of the Christian Socialists in Berlin, Brass renewed his attack upon Haeckel on the charge of having falsified the pictures of embryos. Brass showed that Haeckel in his “Anthropogeny” had not only falsified the illustrations of embryos, but had assigned to them other names than those they had originally borne thereby provoking Professor Anton His to declare publicly that Haeckel was lying. “I can make these charges,” said Brass, “from accurate knowledge directly acquired, since I myself made the true drawings for Haeckel.” The Brass charges included an analysis of Haeckel’s use of the skeleton of the gibbon, orang, chimpanzee, gorilla and man and stated: “These tables show intentional falsifications to uphold the false caption (skeletons of the five anthropoid apes.”) “The uprightness of man’s carriage is concealed. The gorilla’s knee has been pressed to make it appear to be standing straight. The walking posture of all the apes is false. This table is an example of how Haeckel misuses the wor’s of other people.” Haeckel asserted that if he were to be accused of falsifying the illustrations *of embryos then similar accusations must be brought against hundreds of other highly respected embryologists, anatomists and zoologists, for the reason that they all practised falsifications as much as he himself and had in many ways “schematised” their illustrations. “By ‘schematised,’ ” he explains, “I mean I omitted unessential adjuncts and strongly emphasised essential form relations. I also filled in deficiencies here and there by comparative syntheses.” TSa was confession enough. Certainly it. contributes to an adequate appreciation of the sweeping judgment rendered by Professor Charles Deperet (“Umbilduog der Tierwelt,” p. 113) : “The embryological methods of Haeckel have led the whole of palaeontological research in a wrong direction.” In the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschriff, 1909, Professor Keibel, of Freiburg, published a crushing criticism of Haeckel’s falsifications. As to whether they were falsifications or inaccuracies an illustration will disclose. Haeckel had put a human head on an upe embryo and this in spite of the fact that Professor Brass had personally shown Haeckel the correct illustration. Haeckel had cut off the tail of the embryo of a macacus (tailed monkey)' and turned it into a tailless ape (gibbon). Haeckel's confes- • sion that “six or eight per cent.,” but no more than six or eight per cent, of his drawings were falsified, appeared in the “Berliner Volkszeitung,” December 29, 1908. Despite all the evidence to the contrary Haeckel declares (Weltratsel, p. 29) : “In the last twenty years a considerable number of well-preserved fossil skeletons of anthropoid and other apes have been discovered and amongst them are all the important intrnnediate forms, which constitute a series of ancestors connecting the oldest anthropoid apes with man.” When Haeckel wrote that passage be knew that not only was there no such series in existence, but that there was not a single fossil fragment of a series in existence. The falsehood was deliberate. So, too. was the falsehood of his “Anthropogeny” exposed by Professor Milnes Marshall. In true Haeckelian style the human embryo as described by the Jena mutilator was shown to be a description of the embryos of dogs, pigs, rabbits, even chickens and dogfish. Such were the frauds which the apostle of evolution did not hesitate to present to the world as “evidence” for “Darwinism.” See Nature, March 24, 1892. I venture to think that the charge against the opponents of evolution of misrepresentation concerning Haeckel cannot be sustained.—l am, etc., FRANK SAMPSON.