That Missing Link

New Zealand Tablet, 15 October 1908, Page 9

That Missing Link

At intervals—usually during the journalistic ' silly season ' — reports are published detailing the discover}' of the ' missing link ' between man and ape. Yesterday it was in tropical Africa, to-day it is in the Northern Territojy of South Australia, now it is in the sands of the Amazon, again it is in the oast, and anon, lo! it cometh out of the west. But whether in east or west, or in the African forest or elsewhere, the coy thing, like the spiritist's unwilling spook, refuses to ' materialise.' And men of foremost rank in science persist -in maintaining that the ' missing link ' is like Sairey Gamp's imaginary Mrs. 'Arris — there ain't no sich a person. Among the great scientists who concur in this verdict now stands Professor Klaatsch, who has been moved to this conclusion by ,a life-study of the subject * The Darwinites,.' says the Philadelphia Catholic Standard, ' have received a sad shock by the defection from' their school of a foremost upholder of the theor}' of evolution. Professor Klaatsch, of the University of Breslau, a gre^t scientist in anthropology, has announced his conclusion that both Darwin and Haeckel were wrong when they agreed that there was a progressive connection between prehistoric man and the man-shaped apes.. He has devoted most of his life to the study of the skulls of each, and the resulf is his conclusion that tlie human skull has tjo true structural identity with that of the inferior species. The oldest' human skull found—that of the Linderthal or Neander , Valley man—lias the same well-developed chin and nose as the modern " human " j and to the great. " missing link " theory becomes merely a~ phantasm more unreal than the swamp fire called VVill-o'-the-Wisp. Man is still'the lord of creation,, the highest work of the ,hand of his Maker, superb in intellect and unrivalled in physical attributes.' - - <, ■ ~