A Day In The Classroom

(Excerpts from the Geology I lectures of Professor Kirtley F. Mather)

"As proof of the fact that there are some good consequences to the New Deal, the most conclusive evidence concerning the antiquity of man in North America has been found recently in the discovery of the Minnesota girl by some W.P.A. workers.

"The skeleton is in stratified clay of an ancient glacial lake. This poor girl, whose teeth are quite projecting, was drowned in the waters of this lake over 20,000,000 years ago. A dagger is beside her body. This may be the first great American tragedy!

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"Out in Nebraska, a collection of pig bones has been found in windblown sand. Some ancestral pigs had sought protection. Here back in Miocene times were pigs living gregariously.

Intelligent Trilobites

"Having reached their heights in the Ordovician, the Trilobites began to waste their substance in riotous living. Before the close of the Permian, the last Trilobite had been banished from the face of the earth. The Trilobites probably arose from segmented worms in the Pre-Cambrian.

"The sad story of the rise and fall of the Trilobites is made more poignant when it is considered that in Cambrian time they were the most intelligent and promising. Probably insects arose from the earliest Trilobites. I mention this to relieve the gloom of the rise and fall of this group of animals.

"By sacrifice there came progress. From failure came success. The best way to succeed is to fall. One of the best ways to fail is to succeed. Consider the dinosaurs, tremendously successful in their day. Where are they now?

Shows Crude Diagram

"May I show you, and of course it will be a rather crude diagram by the time it is transferred to your notebooks --shows diagrams of man's descent both from a spider and a worm by the Arachnid and Amphioxus Theories.

"Mankind belongs to the order of Primates. There is no more reason for our being ashamed of our Northarctus ancestors (early Primates) than for the horse to be ashamed of Eohippus (early ancestral horse). In science we have no fear or shame, we merely survey facts open-mindedly. He shows slide of Northarctus, a fur covered monstrosity.

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"It is perfectly possible for a Harvard Ph.D. to marry a Radcliffe summs cum laude who then gives birth to an individual with an L. Q. of 75."