tinent of Australia is separated from
everything about it by deep water, impassable to any animal which
lives upon it. In this secluded country evolution is very slow and
animals are very antiquated. We still find there mammals with the
ancient habit of laying eggs in a hollow in the ground, though after
these eggs are hatched the young are nursed on the milk of the mother.
But on the great continental stretches, where competition is keen,
where the animal must battle for his life against a wide field of
other animals, where migration into new situations is possible, the
rapidity of the development has been very much greater.

It is in such a situation that man has arisen. In the extreme
southeastern portion of Asia, and on the islands lying close to the
coast, his highest non-human relatives, members of the ape family,
have reached their best development. These, of course, are not man's
ancestors. They are the less progressive members who are left behind
entirely in the race. Whether we have to-day any traces of the steps
by which man arose from the animal beneath him is vigorously disputed.
Eminent scientists will be found on both sides of this question.

Many scientific writers to-day take it for granted that one form,
discovered in Java, while it may not be in the absolutely direct line,
must be very close indeed to the line of ascent toward man out of the
apelike forms. A scientist by the name of DuBois, working in the banks
of a stream in south-central Java, found a thigh bone which seemed to
him exceedingly human in its general character and yet not absolutely
like the human thigh bone. The oncoming of the rainy season raised the
water in the river so that DuBois could not continue his search.
Returning a year later, and digging back deeper into this bank, he
found a skull cap and two molar teeth which seemed to him to belong to
the thigh bone, although they lay several yards farther back, but at
the same level in the bank.

When these bones were subsequently presented to a meeting of European
scientists by DuBois, he claimed to have found the "missing link" for
which there was so eager a demand. Some of the best anatomists of the
meeting, notably Virchow, laughed at his claim and said that the skull
cap was simply that of a human idiot, and could be duplicated in any
large asylum. A committee of twelve naturalists was appointed to
report upon DuBois' find. Of this committee three asserted the bones
to be thos