Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/515

Rh collection of facts brought together by Dr. White, the distinguished ex-President of Cornell University, which are embodied in his work entitled "The Warfare of Science," as well as two additional chapters on the same subject, which have lately appeared in "The Popular Science Monthly." One then realizes the lamentable but startling truth that, without a single exception, every theory or hypothesis, every discovery or generalization of science has been bitterly opposed by the Church, and particularly by the Catholic Church, which resists, and, as Huxley says, "must, as a matter of life and death, resist the progress of science and modern civilization."

Only the briefest reference can here be made to a few of the numerous contributions on the subject of man's relationship to the animals below him. The rapidly-accumulating proofs of the close relation existing between man and the quadrumana, make interesting every fact, however trivial, in regard to the structure and habits of the higher apes.

Dr. Arthur E. Brown has made some interesting experiments with the monkeys at the Zoölogical Gardens in Philadelphia. He found that the monkeys showed great fear, as well as curiosity, when a snake was placed in their cage, though they were not affected by other animals, such as an alligator and turtle. On the other hand, mammals belonging to other orders showed no fear or curiosity at a snake. These experiments, repeated in various ways, lead him to only one logical conclusion, "that the fear of the serpent became instinctive in some far-distant progenitor of man, by reason of his long exposure to danger and death in a horrible form, from the bite, and that it has been handed down through the diverging lines of descent which find their expression to-day in Homo and Pithecus."

The same author, in an exceedingly interesting description of the higher apes, says: "Mr. A. R. Wallace once called attention to the similarity in color existing between the orang and chimpanzee and the human natives of their respective countries. It would, indeed, seem as if but half the truth had been told, and that the comparison might be carried also into the region of mind; the quick, vivacious chimpanzee partaking of the mercurial disposition of negro races, while the apathetic, slow orang would pass for a disciple of the sullen fatalism of the Malay."

Dr. Brown has also given a description of the grief manifested by a chimpanzee on the death of its mate. His grief was shown by tearing his hair or snatching at the short hair on his head. The yell of rage was followed by a cry the keeper had never heard before, a sound which might be represented by hah-ah-ah-ah-ah uttered somewhat under the breath, and with a plaintive sound like a moan.

Mr. W. F. Hornaday read at the Saratoga meeting of this