SCHOOL IN THE OPEN

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18644, 22 December 1928, Page 20 (Supplement)

SCHOOL IN THE OPEN

STUDIES IN THE GREAT OUT-OF-DOORS

(By

J. J. S. Cornes,

8.A., B.Sc.)

The “Star” has arranged with Mr J. J. S. Cornes, 8.A. : B.Sc M to write a series of illustrated articles which will give teachers and others a fuller appreciation of the Great Out-of-doors. They will deal with various aspects of plant and animal life, as well as with inanimate nature. Questions and material for identification will be welcomed.

THE ASCENT OF MAN. No one thinks less of Sir Isaac Newton because he was born as a very puny infant, and no one should think less of the human race because it sprang from a stock of arboreal mammals. There is no doubt as to man’s apartness from the rest of creation when he is seen at his best—"a little lower than the angels crowned with glory and honour." "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason ! How noble in faculty! In form and moving how express and admir able! In action how like an angel! In apprehension so like a god." Nevertheless. all the facts point to his affiliation to the stock to which monkeys and apes also belong Not. indeed, that man is descended from any living ape or monkey; it is rather that he and they have sprung from a common ancestry—are branches of the same stem. The reasons for accepting these conclusions were expounded by Darwin with masterly skill in his "Descent of Man" in 1871. Anatomical Proof. Bone for bone, muscle for muscle, blood-vessel for blood-vessel, nerve for nerve, man agrees with gorilla, orang, chimpanzee and gibbon. The only momentous difference is that mans big brain may be three times as heavy as that of the gorilla, the average human brain weighing forty-eight ounces, and the gorilla s twenty ounces at its best. We are not suggesting that the most distinctive features of man are such as can be measured and weighed, but that these are associated with a larger brain and more capacious skull.

Man alone is thoroughly erect after infancy. He has a bigger and more upright forehead than the ape, a less protrusive face region, smaller cheekbones and eyebrow ridges, more uniform teeth. He alone has a chin. He plants the sole of his foot flat oil the ground, his big toe in a line with the others, and he has a better heel. Everyone is familiar in man's clothing with traces of the past persisting in the present, though their use has long since disappeared. There are buttons on the back of the waist of certain dress coats to which the tails used to be fastened, with buttons and even buttonholes at the wrist which were once useful for turning up the sleeves. Similarly, man’s body is a veritable museum of relics, about a hundred of them. In the inner upper corner of the eye there is a minute tag, larger in some races than in others, which is the last dwindling relic of the third eyelid, used in cleaning the front of the eye, and well developed in an ox or a rabbit. In man and in monkeys it has become a useless vestige, its dwingling being associated with the increasing mobility of the upper eyelid. Then there are the vestigial ear-moving and skin-twitching muscles, and the short tail which in the seven-weeks-old human embryo is actually langer than the leg. Then there is that troublesome relic, the vermiform appendix. These vestigial structures are, as Darwin said, like the unsounded, functionless letters in words, such as the “o" in "leopard," the "b" in “doubt,” the "g" in "reign.” They are no .longer of any use, but they tell us the history of the words. So do man’s vestigial structure reveal his pedigree; and no other interpretation is conceivable.

Some men, oftener than women, show on the in turned margin of the ear-trumpet a little conical projection of great interest. It is a vestige of the tip of the pointed ear of lower mammals, and it is well named "Darwin’s point,” for it was he who describee! it as a “surviving symbol of the stirring times and dangerous days of man’s animal youth.” Physiological Proofs. The everyday functions of the human body are practically the same as those of the anthropoid ape, and similar disorders are common to both. Monkeys are particularly prone to the attack of certain microbes to which man also is peculiarly liable, such''-as the bacillus of tuberculosis. When human blood is transfused into a dog or even a monkey it behaves in a hostile way to the other blood, bringing about a destruction of the red blood corpuscles. But when it is transferred into a chimpanzee there is a harmonious mingling of the two. This is a very literal demonstration of man’s blood-relationship with the higher, "tail-less” apes. But there is a fine form of the same experiment. When the clear blood-fluid, or serum, of a rabbit, which has had human blood in-

jected into it, is mingled with human blood, it forms a cloudy precipitate by "agglutinating” the human corpuscles. It forms almost as marked a precipitate when mingled with the blood of an anthropoid ape. But with monkey blood there is only a slight clouding and no actual precipitate. With a “half-monkey,” or lemur, there is no reaction; and so also with the blood of mammals of the simian line altogether. Thus the very degree of relationship between man and the apes can be measured. We can imagine how this modern line of experimenting would have delighted Darwin. We must pass over the evidence from embryology and individual development. But when all these lines of evidence are considered, they are seen to converge in the conclusion that man is derived from a simian stock of mammals. He is solidary with the rest of creation. To quote the closing words of Darwin’s “Descent of Man”; “We must, however, .acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends, not only to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his God-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—man still bears in his bodily frame the ; indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” We should be clear that this view does

not say more than that man sprang from a stock common to him and to the higher apes. Those who are repelled by the idea of man’s* derivation from a simian type should remember that the theory implies rather more than this, namely, that man is the outcome of a that has implied millions of years of experimenting and sifting—the groaning and travailing of a whole creation. In any case, we have to square our views with the facts', not the facts with our views, and while one of the facts is that man stands unique and apart, the other is that man is a scion of a progressive simian sock. Naturalists have exposed the pit whence man has been digged, and the rock whence he has been hewn, but it is surely a heartening encouragement to know that it is an ascent, not a fall, that we have behind us. There is wisdom in the maxim of great Pascal, "It is dangerous to show man too plainly how like he is to the animals without, at the same time, reminding him of his greatness. It is equally unwise to impress him with his greatness and not with his lowliness. It is worse to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is very profitable to recognise the two facts'.” (To be continued next Saturday.)