Men and Apes

One Charles Smith of Manhattan, president of an Association for the Advancement of Atheism, found his way into public prints last week. Experiments were to be conducted, he said, at the Pasteur Institute of Kindia, French West Africa, to "support" Evolution by breeding apes with humans. Soviet Russia had contributed $10,000. A total of $100,000 was needed over a period of years. Eminent Professor Elie Ivanoff of Moscow had already departed for Africa to make preparations.

A statement by Lawyer Howland S. England of Detroit was also published, indicating that the experiments would follow the ideas of Anthropologist F. G. Cruikshank* of London. The latter's researches have convinced him that offspring capable of reproducing themselves can be obtained by crossing orangoutangs with the yellow race, gorillas with the black race and chimpanzees with the white race, the theory being that the divisions of the anthropoid and human races pair off thus most closely as kindred types.

This test of evolution would be decisive only in the event that pregnancy, whether productive of healthy offspring or not, could be induced. If it could, fresh and final evidence would be established that humans and anthropoids belong to a common genus of animal life. To be complete, the hybrid fertilization would have to be attempted upon females of both species, human and ape. Fully formed, healthy offspring, if they resulted, would not be regarded as "missing links," but as living proof that apes and men are species as closely allied as horses and asses which can be hybridized to produce mules or hinnies.* If an ape-man or man-ape hybrid should prove fecund, the relationship of the two parent species would be proved even closer than is now supposed. If no offspring resulted, evolution would by no means fall; the distance of apes and men from a parent stock would merely be demonstrated to be as great or greater than it is now estimated. Most scientists regarded the Kindia experiments with utter skepticism, though also, as becomes scientists, with open minds. From Moscow last week Dr. Ivanoff's chief assistant bitterly denied any connection with Atheist Smith's curious organization, did not deny that the experiments were to be made.

*Author of THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST--Dutton ($1).

*Offspring of a stallion and an ass. Like the mule, the hinnie is sterile.