To Professor Raymond Dart

(A tribute on his 80th birthday-4 February 1973)

When you’ve looked down the corridors of time And seen Mankind survive a million years Of foes and follies, fallacies and fears, Four-score must seem indeed a trifling count- And hope for man more justified than tears.

Is this the purpose of your restless urge To probe the past, that, lit with timeless truth, His future ages shall be less uncouth? . . . . . Then, truly sapient, Homo yet may share Your envied secret of perennial youth.

J. P. Hutchings

Journal of Human Evolution (1973) 2, 415.