[Note 74] p. 318.—Man’s Place in Nature.
It should be noted that the zoologist’s usual statement of his position is that he believes that men and the higher apes have arisen from a common stock. See Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature. As the anthropoid apes are believed to have diverged as distinct types in Miocene times, the common stock is plainly in the almost inconceivably distant past. A belief in descent from a common stock does not in the least affect the demonstrable distinctiveness of man, nor does it explain how the evolution, whose results we are, took place. See Darwin’s Descent of Man, and Drummond’s Ascent of Man.
DESERT JOURNEYS.
[Note 75] p. 330.—Nodules in the Desert.
These seem to be the now well-known manganese nodules. The puzzling question of their origin is discussed by Dr. John Murray in that part of the Challenger Reports which deals with marine deposits. Solymos thus describes them, “Belted by higher hills, I have mounted one, apparently consisting entirely of a lofty pile of hardened equal sandstone balls, the size of peaches. They were as nearly globular as anything in nature—a bubble, a drop, a planet.”
NUBIA AND THE NILE RAPIDS.
For some interesting geological and zoological observations see A. Leith Adams, Notes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta (1870). J. H. Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1864).
[Note 76] p. 358,—On the Nile and its Cataracts.
See Sir Samuel Baker’s The Nile and its Tributaries (1867), and Walter Budge, The Nile: Notes for Travellers in Egypt (1890).
[Note 77] p. 359.—Syenite.