Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II THE STRUGGLE OVER OUR GENEALOGICAL TREE OUR APE-RELATIVES AND THE VERTEBRATE-STEM EXPLANATION OF PLATE II SKELETONS OF FIVE ANTHROPOID APES These skeletons of the five living genera of anthropomorpha are reduced to a common size, in order to show better the relative proportions of the various parts. The human skeleton is DEGREESth natural size, the gorilla DEGREESth, the chimpanzee th, the orang ?th, the gibbon th. Young specimens of the chimpanzee and orang have been selected, because they approach nearer to man than the adult. No one of the living anthropoid apes is nearest to man in all respects; this cannot be said of either of the African (gorilla and chimpanzee) or the Asiatic (orang and gibbon). This anatomic fact is explained phylogenetically on the ground that none of them are direct ancestors of man; they represent divergent branches of the stem, of which man is the crown. However, the small gibbon is nearest related to the hypothetical common ancestor of all the anthropomorpha to which we give the name of Prothylobates. Further information will be found in my Last Link and Evolution of Man (chap, xxiii.). CHAPTER II THE STRUGGLE OVER OUR GENEALOGICAL TREE OUR APE-RELATIVES AND THE VERTEBRATE-STEM In the previous chapter I tried to give you a general idea of the present state of the controversy in regard to evolution. Comparing the various branches of thought we found that the older mythological ideas of the creation of the world were driven long ago out of the province of inorganic science, but that they did not yield to the rational conception of natural development until a much later date in the field of organic nature. Here the idea of evolution did not prove completely victorious until the beginning of the twe
