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One generation of dumb beasts is after all very like another, and from studying the careers of the mastodon, the hipparion, the sabre-toothed lion, or even the dryopithecus, an observer in the Miocene age could never have foreseen the possibility of a creature endowed with such a boundless capacity of progress as the modern Man.
Drill, sexual difference of colour in the. Dromaeus irroratus. Dromolaea, Saharan species of. Drongo shrike. Drongos, racket-shaped feathers in the tails of. Dryness of climate, supposed influence of, on the colour of the skin. Dryopithecus. Duck, harlequin, age of mature plumage in the; breeding in immature plumage. Duck, long-tailed, preference of male, for certain females.
Among these residents of early Europe was at least one representative of the anthropoid apes, the fossil species known as Dryopithecus, from the middle Miocene deposits of St. Gaudens, France. This species, apparently most nearly allied to the chimpanzee, was taller than any existing ape.
Perhaps Professor Boyd-Dawkins, who credits the "dryopithecus" with these productions, is a more consistent evolutionist; but at present Mr. Laing is defending a thesis as to man's antiquity. Yet he has just said that these flint instruments are "only one step in advance of the rude, natural stone which an intelligent orang or chimpanzee might pick up to crack a cocoa-nut with."
We are far from knowing how long ago it was when man first diverged from the Catarrhine stock; but it may have occurred at an epoch as remote as the Eocene period; for that the higher apes had diverged from the lower apes as early as the Upper Miocene period is shewn by the existence of the Dryopithecus.
The only time they got together they got slangin' because they couldn't agree upon the scientific classification of these red-headed devils that had got hold of us. One said it was the dryopithecus of Java, the other said it was pithecanthropus. Madness, I call it Loonies, both. But, as I say, I had thought out one or two points that were helpful.
Lartet, E., comparison of cranial capacities of skulls of recent and tertiary mammals; on the size of the brain in mammals; on Dryopithecus; on pre-historic flutes. Larus, seasonal change of plumage in. Larva, luminous, of a Brazilian beetle. Larynx, muscles of the, in songbirds. Lasiocampa quercus, attraction of males by the female; sexual difference of colour in.
Laing's own conclusions from skulls and human remains which he takes to be those of tertiary man, show man to be as obstinately unlike the "dryopithecus" as ever, in fact, the reputedly oldest skulls are a decided improvement on the Carnstadt and Neanderthal type. Even then man seems to have been the same flint-chipping, tool-making, speaking animal as now.
The first appearance of the primates is in Eocene times and the anthropoid apes in the Miocene, probably five millions of years ago. The form which may have been in our line of descent, the Dryopithecus, later appears to have become extinct. Did our fate hang upon the success of any of these forms? The monkeys and anthropoid apes appeared at the same time in different countries.
The sparse remains of Dryopithecus, the species in question, with some few other fossils of doubtfully anthropoid species, save us from a total blank, and open the vista to a myriad of active arboreal creatures which had their dwelling-place in the old-time European forests, but have almost utterly vanished from human knowledge.
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