TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMAL LIFE BETWEEN LAND AND WATER
| LAND | WATER | |
| Except a few forms living in damp places, or as parasites | —All the Protozoa. | |
| —All the Sponges. | ||
| —All the Cœlenterata. | ||
| Except a few forms terrestrial, and many parasitic | —Vermes. | |
| Insects, except | —A very few adult forms and a few larvæ. |  |
| Except Wood-lice and a very few others | —Crustacea. | |
| Spider-like animals, except | —Limulus. | |
| —All the Brachiopoda. | ||
| —All the Polyzoa. | ||
| —All the Echinodermata. | ||
| Except the Land-snails | —Mollusca. | |
| —Hemichordata. |  | |
| —Urochordata, or Ascidians. | ||
| —All the Fishes: (some few can exist in damp places | ||
| Amphibia belong to both. | ||
| All the Reptiles | —Except swimming forms, which are nevertheless air-breathers, only partially adapted for water life: Tortoises and Turtles, Crocodiles and Water-Snakes, e.g. | |
| All the Birds: swimming and diving forms are only adapted for temporary visits to the water | ||
| All the Mammals | —Except Whales, Sirenia, and Seals, which are nevertheless air-breathers, only partially adapted for water life. | |
Another volume of this series, "The Story of the Earth," has already dealt with the distribution of animal life in time; while "The Story of Animal Life in the Sea" tells about the present inhabitants of the ocean. It is therefore unnecessary to say much in this volume regarding the distribution of animal life. A table is, however, appended, which is not without interest. It shows how the chief great groups of animals are divided between land life and water life, whether in fresh water or salt. It will be seen that the terrestrial animals are much in a minority, and that they belong, for the most part, to the higher types. They are, in fact, stragglers, bold emigrants from the early home of animal life, which lies in the more shallow parts of the waters of the sea.
CHAPTER XV
MAN
If we are to accept the opinion of Dr. Isaac Watts, man, as a moral being, is distinctly inferior to the "birds in their little nests," who live in harmony with one another; and, again, if we are to believe Solomon, he is by no means always the equal in intelligence of the Ant. Yet somehow it came as a shock to many who had been accustomed to revere both these authors, when they were asked, early in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to regard man, from a zoological point of view, as just a little superior to the Apes.
Then arose a great agitation as to the possibility of finding the Missing Link. We shall see later on in this chapter, that if Research had been content, like Charity, to begin at home, its industry would have been duly rewarded.
But inquiry, carried far afield in time and place, has not been without result. For it is generally believed that the remains found in 1894 in Java by Dr. Eugène Dubois, are veritably those of the Missing Link. These remains, which consist of the top of a skull, two teeth and a thigh bone, belong either to the oldest Pleistocene age, or to the upper Pliocene; they are found in association with the remains of other animals, among which are included some forms now extinct, or absent from that region. These ape-like remains have been carefully compared with those of the lowest races of man which have hitherto been found in a fossil state, and the result of the comparison is as follows: Of twelve experts present at the Zoological Congress held at Leyden, "three held that the fossil remains belonged to a low race of man, three declared them to be those of a man-like ape of great size; the rest maintained that they belonged to an intermediate form, which directly connected primitive man with the anthropoid apes" (Haeckel). To the creature represented by these bones has been assigned the name of Pithecanthropus erectus, the Upright Ape-Man.
Let us now return from the subject of the Java fossil to those inquiries which, as we have above suggested, begin at home. We have already referred to the great principle of modern zoology, that the history of the development of the individual sums up the history of the development of the race. Of late years it has occurred to scientific men to apply this principle in the case of human beings, and to ask, "What can the baby teach us?"