Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/562

528 with the honour. Generally they lay two eggs; very seldom are three found in one nest. Both male and female divide their time on the eggs for a month. In the summer of 1899 they sat from the beginning of November to the beginning of December. When the mother Penguin feeds the young one, the latter puts the whole of its head into the beak of its parent, and stuffs its beak right into the mother's throat, which by a shaking movement brings the food up. It was curious to see when a gale suddenly surprised the colony; they all lay down with their beaks to the south-east, from which direction came the strongest gales. They looked like soldiers bivouacking on a battle-field.

following extract recently appeared in the 'Standard,' creating some sensation among the other daily papers, and showing the drift of public interest in scientific theories as now recognized by journalism:—

"At the recent Congress of German anthropologists at Halle, Professor Klaatsch, of Heidelberg, read a paper on 'The Significance of the Bicephalous Muscle of the Upper Part of the Thigh,' in the course of which he argued that 'the hypothesis of the direct descent of man from Apes can no longer be maintained.' He based his belief on the following grounds: Man possesses a muscle on the upper part of the thigh, one strand of which proceeds from the pelvis, while the other, which is free and supplied with a special nerve, proceeds from the upper part of the thigh, and is attached to the fibula. After several years' investigation, Prof. Klaatsch came to the conclusion that the so-called 'short strand' is a rudimentary form of the biceps muscle, which is much more frequently found in mammals than has hitherto been assumed. Marsupials, Carnivora, many Rodents, and some American Monkeys have been found by the Professor to possess a thick ribbon-like muscle, supplied with the same nerve as the 'short strand.'

"A whole family of mammals appears to have possessed this muscle to a very large extent, and it is only in man, anthropoid Apes, and American prehensile-tailed Monkeys that it has been modified to the 'short strand' of the biceps muscle. It was originally supposed that the erect walking gait of once climbing animals was connected with this muscle modification. Many such climbing mammals, however, as well as all the Lemurs, &c, of the Old World, have completely lost the muscle, so that its preservation in the case of certain primates and man must be due to some other cause. This cause is made apparent on an examination of the forms of man and the higher primates, whose limbs more closely resemble the original mammalian form than is the case with the majority of other animals. The supposition therefore of a direct descent of man from the Ape is no longer tenable. The now existing Apes are for the most part degenerate forms. The connection of man and Apes is to be sought at the root of the common family tree."