Little Apples

THE PHILADELPHIA CONFERENCE OF NATURAL SCIENTISTS

The first conference paper to be read was “The Descent of Man,” dedicated to the memory of Darwin. Since the delegates in the large conference hall were linked to each other by telephone, the paper was read in a whisper. The distinguished reader stated that he was in full agreement with Darwin: the apes were at the bottom of it all. If there had been no apes there would have been no people, and had there been no people there would have been no criminals. The delegates agreed unanimously that all apes were to be advised of our displeasure, and that the public prosecutor was to be notified.

Some delegates did, however, voice certain doubts:

The French delegate was in full agreement with the other delegates’ opinion, but at a loss to explain how one might account for the origins of, say, pigs in clover or crocodiles shedding tears. Having expounded on this point, the distinguished delegate presented diagrams of pigs in clover and teary-eyed crocodiles. The debate deadlocked, and it was proposed that the matter be postponed to the following session, and also that all telephones be disconnected before a final decision was reached.

The German delegate (who was also the foreign correspondent of the Russian Slavophile newspaper Russ), declared that he was leaning more toward the theory that man developed from a crossbreeding of apes and parrots. In his opinion, men were in the process of destroying themselves by their aping of foreign ways. (A buzz of approval was heard over the telephone lines.)

The Belgian delegate agreed with the other delegates to a certain extent, but in his opinion not all nations could have developed from apes. Russians, he argued, had evolved from thieving magpies, Jews from foxes, and Englishmen from frozen fish. He proved his theory about the Russians’ magpie heritage quite convincingly, and as the other delegates were still under the sway of the big embezzlement trials going on in Moscow they were quite ready to adopt the Belgian delegate’s thieving magpie theory. (The Times)