Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/113

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of the most interesting, and certainly most suggestive addresses delivered at the recent meeting of the International Congress of Zoology at Cambridge, was that of Prof. Haeckel "On our Present Knowledge of the Descent of Man." This has now been published in book form, as above; with many "additions and notes" by the Professor's old pupil, Dr. H. Gadow.

Man's place in Zoology is still, as Huxley described it, "the question of questions for mankind"; and if that remark was true in 1863, it is still more pressing to-day, when, as the author most truly observes: "At the end of the nineteenth century, the age of 'natural science,' the department of knowledge that has made most progress is zoology." The position of man in the animal world is now considered with calmness and discussed with urbanity. It was even quite recently, when brought into line with science, or discussed on an old and dear tradition, described, on one side, as "a tale told by an idiot," or, on the other, as a matter of "sound and fury signifying nothing." Both sides have come nearer to each other with further knowledge, and all who study the question now admit the evidence of an evolutionary plan. Whether that plan is simply the result of natural forces, or an evidence of a design beyond our cognition, is a question not for these pages.

We can only summarise Prof. Haeckel's views on this problem. He considers the celebrated fossil Pithecanthropus erectus, discovered recently by Dr. Dubois in Java, as a form which connected primitive man with the anthropoid apes, and as indeed the long-searched-for "missing link." That man was "known with cer-