CHAPTER 24. -- BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF

MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION.

Whether Man can be regarded as an Exception to the Rule if the

Doctrine of Transmutation be embraced for the rest of the

Animal Kingdom.

Zoological Relations of Man to other Mammalia.

Systems of Classification.

Term Quadrumanous, why deceptive.

Whether the Structure of the Human Brain entitles Man to form a

distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia.

Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to the Intellect and

Reason of Man.

Grounds on which Man has been referred to a distinct Kingdom of

Nature.

Immaterial Principle common to Man and Animals.

Non-discovery of intermediate Links among Fossil Anthropomorphous

Species.

Hallam on the compound Nature of Man, and his Place in the Creation.

Great Inequality of mental Endowment in different Human Races

and Individuals developed by Variation and ordinary Generation.

How far a corresponding Divergence in physical Structure may result

from the Working of the same Causes.

Concluding remarks.

Some of the opponents of transmutation, who are well versed in Natural

History, admit that though that doctrine is untenable, it is not

without its practical advantages as a "useful working hypothesis," often

suggesting good experiments and observations and aiding us to retain in

the memory a multitude of facts respecting the geographical distribution

of genera and species, both of animals and plants, the succession in

time of organic remains, and many other phenomena which, but for such a

theory, would be wholly without a common bond of relationship.

It is in fact conceded by many eminent zoologists and botanists, as

before explained, that whatever may be the nature of the species-making

power or law, its effects are of such a character as to imitate the

results which variation, guided by natural selection, would produce,

if only we could assume with certainty that there are no limits to the

variability of species. But as the anti-transmutationists are persuaded

that such limits do exist, they regard the hypothesis as simply a

provisional one, and expect that it will one day be superseded by

another cognate theory, which will not require us to assume the former

continuousness of the links which have connected the past and present

states of the organic world, or the outgoing with the incoming species.

In like manner, many of those who hesitate to give in their full

adhesion to the doctrine of progression, the other twin branch of the

development theory, and who even object to it, as frequently tending to

retard the reception of new facts supposed to militate against opinions

solely founded on negative evidence, are nevertheless agreed that on

the whole it is of great service in guiding our speculations. Indeed it

cannot be denied that a theory which establishes a connection between

the absence of all relics of vertebrata in the oldest fossiliferous

rocks, and the presence of man's remains in the newest, which affords a

more than plausible explanation of the successive appearance in strata

of intermediate age of the fish, reptile, bird, and mammal, has no

ordinary claims to our favour as comprehending the largest number of

positive and negative facts gathered from all parts of the globe, and

extending over countless ages, that science has perhaps ever attempted

to embrace in one grand generalisation.

But will not transmutation, if adopted, require us to include the human

race in the same continuous series of developments, so that we must hold

that Man himself has been derived by an unbroken line of descent from

some one of the inferior animals? We certainly cannot escape from such

a conclusion without abandoning many of the weightiest arguments which

have been urged in support of variation and natural selection considered

as the subordinate causes by which new types have been gradually

introduced into the earth. Many of the gaps which separate the most

nearly allied genera and orders of mammalia are, in a physical point of

view, as wide as those which divide Man from the mammalia most nearly

akin to him, and the extent of his isolation, whether we regard his

whole nature or simply his corporeal attributes, must be considered

before we can discuss the bearing of transmutation upon his origin and

place in the creation.

SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION.

In order to qualify ourselves to judge of the degree of affinity in

physical organisation between Man and the lower animals, we cannot

do better than study those systems of classification which have been

proposed by the most eminent teachers of natural history. Of these an

elaborate and faithful summary has recently been drawn up by the late

Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, which the reader will do well to consult.*

(* "Histoire Naturale Generale des Regnes organiques" Paris

volume 2 1856.)

He begins by passing in review numerous schemes of classification, each

of them having some merit, and most of them having been invented with a

view of assigning to Man a separate place in the system of Nature, as,

for example, by dividing animals into rational and irrational, or the

whole organic world into three kingdoms, the human, the animal, and the

vegetable--an arrangement defended on the ground that Man is raised

as much by his intelligence above the animals as are these by their

sensibility above plants. Admitting that these schemes are not

unphilosophical, as duly recognising the double nature of Man (his moral

and intellectual, as well as his physical attributes), Isidore G. St.

Hilaire observes that little knowledge has been imparted by them. We

have gained, he says, much more from those masters of the science who

have not attempted any compromise between two distinct orders of ideas,

the physical and psychological, and who have confined their attention

strictly to Man's physical relation to the lower animals.

Linnaeus led the way in this field of inquiry by comparing Man and the

apes, in the same manner as he compared these last with the carnivores,

ruminants, rodents, or any other division of warm-blooded quadrupeds.

After several modifications of his original scheme, he ended by placing

Man as one of the many genera in his order Primates, which embraced not

only the apes and lemurs, but the bats also, as he found these last to

be nearly allied to some of the lowest forms of the monkeys. But all

modern naturalists, who retain the order Primates, agree to exclude from

it the bats or Cheiroptera; and most of them class Man as one of

several families of the order Primates. In this, as in most systems

of classification, the families of modern zoologists and botanists

correspond with the genera of Linnaeus.

Blumenbach, in 1779, proposed to deviate from this course, and to

separate Man from the apes as an order apart, under the name of Bimana,

or two-handed. In making this innovation he seems at first to have

felt that it could not be justified without calling in psychological

considerations to his aid, to strengthen those which were purely

anatomical; for, in the earliest edition of his "Manual of Natural

History," he defined Man to be "animal rationale, loquens, erectum,

bimanum," whereas in later editions he restricted himself entirely to

the two last characters, namely, the erect position and the two hands,

or "animal erectum, bimanum."

The terms "bimanous" and "quadrumanous" had been already employed by

Buffon in 1766, but not applied in a strict zoological classification

till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve years later, Cuvier adopted the same

order Bimana for the human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs

constituted a separate order called Quadrumana.

Respecting this last innovation, Isidore G. St. Hilaire asks, "How could

such a division stand, repudiated as it was by the anthropologists in

the name of the moral and intellectual supremacy of Man; and by the

zoologists, on the ground of its incompatibility with natural affinities

and with the true principles of classification? Separated as a group of

ordinal value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter

from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant from

the higher mammalia--too near if we take into account those elevated

faculties, which, raising Man above all other organised beings, accord

to him not only the first, but a separate place in the creation--too far

if we merely consider the organic affinities which unite him with the

quadrumana; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical point

of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the lemurs."

"What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and Cuvier? An

impracticable compromise between two opposite and irreconcilable

systems--between two orders of ideas which are clearly expressed in the

language of natural history by these two words: the human KINGDOM and

the human FAMILY. It is one of those would-be via media propositions

which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because they

are intended to please everybody; half-truths, perhaps, but also

half-falsehoods; for what, in science, is a half-truth but an error?"

Isidore G. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite of the

great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large proportion of modern

zoologists of note have rejected the order Bimana, and have regarded Man

simply as a family of one and the same order, Primates.

TERM "QUADRUMANOUS," WHY DECEPTIVE.

Even the term "Quadrumanous" has lately been shown by Professor Huxley,

in a lecture delivered by him in the spring of 1860-61, which I had

the good fortune to hear, to have proved a fertile source of popular

delusion, conveying ideas which the great anatomists Blumenbach and

Cuvier never entertained themselves, namely, that in the so-called

Quadrumana the extremities of the hind-limbs bear a real resemblance to

the human hands, instead of corresponding anatomically with the human

feet.

As this subject bears very directly on the question, how far Man is

entitled, in a purely zoological classification, to rank as an order

apart, I shall proceed to cite, in an abridged form, the words of the

lecturer above alluded to.*

(* Professor Huxley's third lecture "On the Motor Organs of

Man compared with those of other Animals," delivered in the

Royal School of Mines, in Jermyn Street (March 1861) has

been embodied with the rest of the course in his work

entitled "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.")

"To gain," he observes, "a precise conception of the resemblances and

differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive characters of

each, we must look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and

its motor apparatus in each.

"The foot of Man is distinguished from his hand by:--

"1. The arrangement of the tarsal bones.

"2. By having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle of the digits.

"3. By possessing the muscle termed peronaeus longus.

"And if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division of a limb

in other animals is to be called a foot or a hand, it is by the presence

or absence of these characters that we must be guided, and not by the

mere proportions, and greater or lesser mobility of the great toe,

which may vary indefinitely without any fundamental alteration in the

structure of the foot. Keeping these considerations in mind, let us now

turn to the limbs of the Gorilla. The terminal division of the fore-limb

presents no difficulty--bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, are found

to be arranged precisely as in Man, or with such minute differences as

are found as varieties in Man. The Gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier,

and has a thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of Man; but no

one has ever doubted its being a true hand.

"At first sight, the termination of the hind-limb of the Gorilla looks

very hand-like, and as it is still more so in the lower apes, it is not

wonderful that the appellation 'Quadrumana,' or four-handed creatures,

adopted from the older anatomists by Blumenbach, and unfortunately

rendered current by Cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a

name for the ape order. But the most cursory anatomical investigation at

once proves that the resemblance of the so-called 'hindhand' to a

true hand is only skin deep, and that, in all essential respects, the

hind-limb of the Gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that

of Man. The tarsal bones, in all important circumstances of number,

disposition, and form, resemble those of Man. The metatarsals and

digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and more slender,

while the great toe is not only proportionally shorter and weaker,

but its metatarsal bone is united by a far more movable joint with the

tarsus. At the same time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg

than in Man.

"As to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor, and a

peronaeus longus, while the tendons of the long flexors of the great toe

and of the other toes are united together and into an accessory fleshy

bundle.

"The hind-limb of the Gorilla, therefore, ends in a true foot with a

very movable great toe. It is a prehensile foot, if you will, but is

in no sense a hand: it is a foot which differs from that of Man in no

fundamental character, but in mere proportions--degree of mobility--and

secondary arrangement of its parts.

"It must not be supposed, however, that because I speak of these

differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value.

They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being

in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism; but after

all, regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of Man

and the foot of the Gorilla are far more striking and important than the

differences."*

(* Professor Huxley, ibid.)

After dwelling on some points of anatomical detail, highly

important, but for which I have not space here, the Professor

continues--"Throughout all these modifications, it must be recollected

that the foot loses no one of its essential characters. Every monkey and

lemur exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses

a short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a peronaeus longus. Varied

as the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the terminal

division of the hind-limb remains in plan and principle of construction

a foot, and never in the least degree approaches a hand."*

(* Ibid.)

For these reasons, Professor Huxley rejects the term "Quadrumana," as

leading to serious misconception, and regards Man as one of the families

of the Primates. This method of classification he shows to be equally

borne out by an appeal to another character on which so much reliance

has always been placed in classification, as affording in the mammalia

the most trustworthy indications of affinity, namely, the dentition.

"The number of teeth in the Gorilla and all the Old World monkeys,

except the lemurs, is thirty-two, the same as in Man, and the general

pattern of their crowns the same. But besides other distinctions, the

canines in all but Man project in the upper or lower jaws almost like

tusks. But all the American apes have four more teeth in their permanent

set, or thirty-six in all, so that they differ in this respect more from

the Old World apes than do these last from Man."

If therefore, by reference to this character, we place Man in a separate

order, we must make several orders for the apes, monkeys, and lemurs,

and so, in regard to the structure of the hands and feet before alluded

to, "the Gorilla differs far more from some of the quadrumana than he

differs from Man." Indeed, Professor Huxley contends that there is more

difference between the hand and foot of the Gorilla and those of the

Orang, one of the anthropomorphous apes, than between those of the

Gorilla and Man, for "the thumb of the Orang differs by its shortness

and by the absence of any special long flexor muscle from that of the

Gorilla more than it differs from that of Man." The carpus also of the

Orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, while in the

Gorilla, as in Man and the Chimpanzee, there are only eight." Other

characters are also given to show that the Orang's foot separates it

more widely from the Gorilla than that of the Gorilla separates that ape

from Man. In some of the lower apes, the divergence from the human

type of hand and foot, as well as from those of the Gorilla, is still

greater, as, for example, in the spider-monkey and marmoset."*

(* Huxley, ibid. page 29.)

If the muscles, viscera, or any other part of the animal fabric,

including the brain, be compared, the results are declared to be

similar.

WHETHER THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN ENTITLES MAN TO FORM A DISTINCT

SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA.

In consequence of these and many other zoological considerations, the

order Bimana had already been declared, in 1856, by Isidore G. St.

Hilaire in his history of the science above quoted "to have become

obsolete," even though sanctioned by the great names of Blumenbach and

Cuvier. But in opposition to the new views Professor Owen announced, the

year after the publication of G. St. Hilaire's work, that he had been

led by purely anatomical considerations to separate Man from the other

Primates and from the mammalia generally as a distinct SUB-CLASS, thus

departing farther from the classification of Blumenbach and Cuvier than

they had ventured to do from that of Linnaeus.

The proposed innovation was based chiefly on three cerebral characters

belonging, it was alleged, exclusively to Man and thus described in the

following passages of a memoir communicated to the Linnaean Society in

1857, in which all the mammalia were divided, according to the structure

of the brain, into four sub-classes, represented by the kangaroo, the

beaver, the ape, and Man respectively:--

"In Man, the brain presents an ascensive step in development, higher

and more strongly marked than that by which the preceding sub-class

was distinguished from the one below it. Not only do the cerebral

hemispheres overlap the olfactory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend

in advance of the one and farther back than the other. Their posterior

development is so marked that anatomists have assigned to that part the

character of a third lobe; it is peculiar to the genus Homo, and equally

peculiar is the 'posterior horn of the lateral ventricle' and

the 'hippocampus minor' which characterises the hind-lobe of each

hemisphere. The superficial grey matter of the cerebrum, through the

number and depth of its convolutions, attains its maximum of extent in

Man.

"Peculiar mental powers are associated with this highest form of brain,

and their consequences wonderfully illustrate the value of the cerebral

character; according to my estimate of which I am led to regard the

genus Homo as not merely a representative of a distinct order, but of

a distinct sub-class of the mammalia, for which I propose the name of

'Archencephala.'"*

(* Owen, "Proceedings of the Linnaean Society" London volume

8 page 20.)

The above definition is accompanied in the same memoir by the following

note:--"Not being able to appreciate, or conceive, of the distinction

between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman,

or of an Aztec with arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so

essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being other

than a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance

of that all-pervading similitude of structure--every tooth, every bone,

strictly homologous--which makes the determination of the difference

between Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty; and therefore,

with every respect for the author of the Records of Creation,* I follow

Linnaeus and Cuvier in regarding mankind as a legitimate subject of

zoological comparison and classification."

(* The late Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sumner.)

[Illustration: Figure 54, 55 and 56. Brain Of Chimpanzee]

(FIGURE 54. UPPER SURFACE OF BRAIN OF CHIMPANZEE, DISTORTED (FROM

SCHROEDER VAN DER KOLK AND VROLIK.)

Scale half the diameter of the natural size.

A. Left cerebral hemisphere.

B. Right cerebral hemisphere.

C. Cerebellum displaced.)

(FIGURE 55. SIDE VIEW OF BRAIN OF CHIMPANZEE, DISTORTED (FROM

SCHROEDER VAN DER KOLK AND VROLIK.)

Scale half the diameter of the natural size.

e. The extension of the displaced cerebellum beyond the

cerebrum at d.)

(FIGURE 56. CORRECT SIDE VIEW OF CHIMPANZEE'S BRAIN (FROM

GRATIOLET).

Scale half the diameter of the natural size.

d. Backward extension of the cerebrum, beyond the cerebellum at e.

f. Fissure of Sylvius.)

[Illustration: Figure 57 and 58. Chimpanzee and Human Brain]

(FIGURE 57. CORRECT VIEW OF UPPER SURFACE OF CHIMPANZEE'S BRAIN

(FROM GRATIOLET),

in which the cerebrum covers and conceals the cerebellum.

Scale half the diameter of the natural size.)

(FIGURE 58. SIDE VIEW OF HUMAN BRAIN (FROM GRATIOLET), NAMELY,

THAT OF THE BUSHWOMAN CALLED THE HOTTENTOT VENUS.

Scale half the diameter of the natural size.

A. Left cerebral hemisphere.

C. Cerebellum.

ff. Fissure of Sylvius.)

To illustrate the difference between the human and Simian brain,

Professor Owen gave figures of the negro's brain as represented by

Tiedemann, an original one of a South American monkey, Midas rufimanus,

and one of the chimpanzee (Figure 54), from a memoir published in 1849

by MM. Schroeder van der Kolk and M. Vrolik.*

(* "Comptes rendus de l'Academie Royale des Sciences"

Amsterdam volume 13.)

The selection of Figure 54 was most unfortunate, for three years before,

M. Gratiolet, the highest authority in cerebral anatomy of our age, had,

in his splendid work on "The Convolutions of the Brain in Man and

the Primates" (Paris, 1854), pointed out that, though this engraving

faithfully expressed the cerebral foldings as seen on the surface, it

gave a very false idea of the relative position of the several parts

of the brain, which, as very commonly happens in such preparations, had

shrunk and greatly sunk down by their own weight.*

(* Gratiolet's words are: "Les plis cerebraux du chimpanze y

sont fort bien etudies, malheureusement le cerveau qui leur

a servi de modele etait profondement affaisse, aussi la

forme generale du cerveau est-elle rendue, dans leurs

planches, d'une maniere tout-a-fait fausse." Ibid. page 18.)

Anticipating the serious mistakes which would arise from this inaccurate

representation of the brain of the ape, published under the auspices of

men so deserving of trust as the two above-named Dutch anatomists, M.

Gratiolet thought it expedient, by way of warning to his readers, to

repeat their incorrect figures (Figures 54 and 55), and to place by the

side of them two correct views (Figures 56 and 57) of the brain of the

same ape. By reference to these illustrations, as well as to Figure 58,

the reader will see not only the contrast of the relative position of

the cerebrum and cerebellum, as delineated in the natural as well as

in the distorted state, but also the remarkable general correspondence

between the chimpanzee brain and that of the human subject in everything

save in size. The human brain (Figure 58) here given, by Gratiolet,

is that of an African bushwoman, called the Hottentot Venus, who was

exhibited formerly in London, and who died in Paris.

Respecting this striking analogy of cerebral structure in Man and the

apes, Gratiolet says, in the work above cited: "The convoluted brain

of Man and the smooth brain of the marmoset resemble each other by the

quadruple character of a rudimentary olfactory lobe, a posterior lobe

COMPLETELY COVERING THE CEREBELLUM, a well-defined fissure of Sylvius

(ff, Figure 56), and lastly a posterior horn in the lateral ventricle.

These characters are not met with together except in Man and the apes."*

(* Gratiolet, ibid. Avant-propos page 2 1854.)

In reference to the other figure of a monkey given by Professor Owen,

namely, that of the Midas, one of the marmosets, he states, in 1857 as

he had done in 1837, that the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres

"extends, as in most of the quadrumana, over the greater part of the

cerebellum."*

(* "Proceedings of the Linnaean Society" 1857 page 18 note,

and "Philosophical Transactions" 1837 page 93.)

In 1859, in his Rede Lecture, delivered to the University of Cambridge,

the same illustrations of the ape's brain were given, namely, that of

the Midas and the distorted one of the Dutch anatomists already cited

(Figure 54).*

(* See Appendix M.)

Two years later, Professor Huxley, in a memoir "On the Zoological

Relations of Man with the Lower Animals," took occasion to refer to

Gratiolet's warning, and to cite his criticism on the Dutch plates;* but

this reminder appears to have been overlooked by Professor Owen, who six

months later came out with a new paper on "The Cerebral Character of

Man and the Ape," in which he repeated the incorrect representation

of Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, associating it with Tiedemann's

figure of a negro's brain, expressly to show the relative and different

extent to which the cerebellum is overlapped by the cerebrum in the two

cases respectively.** In the ape's brain as thus depicted, the portion

of the cerebellum left uncovered is greater than in the lemurs, the

lowest type of Primates, and almost as large as in the rodentia, or some

of the lowest grades of the mammalia.

(* Huxley, "Natural History Review" January 7, 1861 page

76.)

(** "Annals and Magazine of Natural History" volume 7 1861

page 456 and Plate 20.)

When the Dutch naturalists above mentioned found their figures so often

appealed to as authority, by one the weight of whose opinion on such

matters they well knew how to appreciate, they resolved to do their

best towards preventing the public from being misled. Accordingly, they

addressed to the Royal Academy of Amsterdam a memoir "On the brain of

an Orang-outang" which had just died in the Zoological Gardens of that

city.*

(* This paper is reprinted in the original French in the

"Natural History Review" volume 2 1862 page 111.)

The dissection of this ape, in 1861, fully bore out the general

conclusions at which they had previously arrived in 1849, as to

the existence both in the human and the simian brain of the three

characters, which Professor Owen had represented as exclusively

appertaining to Man, namely, the occipital or posterior lobe, the

hippocampus minor, and the posterior cornu. These last two features

consist of certain cavities and furrows in the posterior lobes, which

are caused by the foldings of the brain, and are only visible when it is

dissected. MM. Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik took this opportunity

of candidly confessing that M. Gratiolet's comments on the defects of

their two figures (Figures 54 and 55) were perfectly just, and they

expressed regret that Professor Owen should have overstated the

differences existing between the brain of Man and the Quadrumana, "led

astray, as they supposed, by his zeal to combat the Darwinian theory

respecting the transformation of species," a doctrine against which

they themselves protested strongly, saying that it belongs to a class

of speculations which are sure to be revived from time to time, and are

always "peculiarly seductive to young and sanguine minds."*

(* Ibid. page 114.)

As the two memoirs before alluded to by us, the one by Mr. Darwin on

"Natural Selection," and the other by Mr. Wallace "On the Tendency of

Varieties to depart indefinitely from the original Type," did not appear

till 1858, a year after Professor Owen's classification of the mammalia,

and as Darwin's "Origin of Species" was not published till another year

had elapsed, we cannot accept the explanation above offered to us of the

causes which led the founder of the sub-class Archencephala to seek for

new points of distinction between the human and simian brains; but the

Dutch anatomists may have fallen into this anachronism by having just

read, in the paper by Professor Owen in the "Annals," some prefatory

allusions to "the Vestiges of Creation," "Natural Selection, and the

question whether man be or be not a descendant of the ape."

The number of original and important memoirs to which this discussion on

the cerebral relations of Man to the Primates has already given rise in

less than five years, must render the controversy for ever memorable in

the history of Comparative Anatomy.*

(* Rolleston, "Natural History Review" April 1861. Huxley,

on "Brain of Ateles" "Proceedings of the Zoological Society"

1861. Flower, "Posterior Lobe in Quadrumana" etc.,

"Philosophical Transactions" 1862. Id. "Javan Loris"

"Proceedings of the Zoological Society" 1862. Id. on

"Anatomy of Pithecia" ibid. 1862.)

In England alone, no less than fifteen genera of the Primates (the

subjects having been almost all furnished by that admirable institution

the Zoological Gardens of London) have been anatomically examined, and

they include nearly all the leading types of structure of the Old

and New World apes and monkeys, from the most anthropoid form to that

farthest removed from Man; in other words, from the Chimpanzee to the

Lemur. These are:--

Troglodytes (Chimpanzee).

Pithecus (Orang).

Hylobates (Gibbon).

Semnopithecus.

Cercopithecus.

Macacus.

Cynocephalus (Baboon).

Ateles (Spider Monkey).

Cebus (Capuchin Monkey).

Pithecia (Saki).

Nyctipithecus (Douricouli).

Hapale (Marmoset).

Otolicnus.

Stenops.

Lemur.

In July 1861 Mr. Marshall, in a paper on the brain of a young

Chimpanzee, which he had dissected immediately after its death, gave a

series of photographic drawings, showing that when the parts are all

in a fresh state, the posterior lobe of the cerebrum, instead of simply

covering the cerebellum, is prolonged backwards beyond it even to a

greater extent than in Gratiolet's figure, 56, and, what is more in

point, in a greater degree relatively speaking (at least in the young

state of the animal) than in Man. In fact, "the projection is to the

extent of about one-ninth of the total length of the cerebrum, whereas

the average excess of overlapping is only one-eleventh in the human

brain."*

(* Marshall, "Natural History Review" July 1861. See also on

this subject Professor Rolleston on the slight degree of

backward extension of the cerebrum in some races of Man.

"Medical Times" October 1862, page 419.)

The same author gives an instructive account of the manner in which

displacement and distortion take place when such brains are preserved in

spirits as in the ordinary preparations of the anatomist.

Mr. Flower, in a recent paper on the posterior lobe of the cerebrum in

the Quadrumana,* remarks, that although Tiedemann had declared himself

unable in 1821 to detect the hippocampus minor or the posterior cornu

of the lateral ventricle in the brain of a Macacus dissected by him,

Cuvier, nevertheless, mentions the latter as characteristic of Man and

the apes, and M. Serres in his well-known work on the brain in 1826,

has shown in at least four species of apes the presence of both the

hippocampus minor and the posterior cornu.

(* "Philosophical Transactions" 1862 page 185.)

Tiedemann had expressly stated that "the third or hinder lobe in the ape

covered the cerebellum as in Man,"* and as to his negative evidence in

respect to the internal structure of that lobe, it can have no weight

whatever against the positive proofs obtained to the contrary by a host

of able observers. Even before Tiedemann's work was published, Kuhl had

dissected, in 1820, the brain of the spider-monkey (Ateles beelzebuth),

and had given a figure of a long posterior cornu to the lateral

ventricle, which he had described as such.**

(* Tiedemann, "Icones cerebri Simiarum" etc. page 48.)

(** "Beitrage zur Zoologie" etc. Frankfurt am Main 1820.)

The general results arrived at by the English anatomists already cited,

and by Professor Rolleston in various papers on the same subject, have

thus been briefly stated by Professor Huxley:--

"Every lemur which has yet been examined has its cerebellum partially

visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior

cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. Every marmoset,

American monkey, Old World monkey, baboon, or man-like ape, on the

contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, and possesses a large

posterior cornu, with a well-developed hippocampus minor.

"In many of these creatures, such as the Saimiri (Chrysothrix), the

cerebral lobes overlap and extend much farther behind the cerebellum in

proportion than they do in Man."*

(* Huxley, "Evidence as to Man's place in Nature" page 97.)

It is by no means pretended that these conclusions of British observers

as to the affinity in cerebral structure of Man and the Primates are

new, but on the contrary that they confirm the inductions previously

made by the principal continental teachers of the last and present

generations, such as Tiedemann, Cuvier, Serres, Leuret, Wagner,

Schroeder van der Kolk, Vrolik, Gratiolet, and others.

At a late meeting of the British Association (1862), Professor Owen read

a paper "On the brain and limb characters of the Gorilla as contrasted

with those of Man"* in which, he observes, that in the gorilla the

cerebrum "extends over the cerebellum, not beyond it."

(* Medical Times and Gazette" October 1862 page 373.)

This statement, although slightly at variance with one published the

year before (1861) by Professor Huxley, who maintains that it does

project beyond, is interesting as correcting the description of the same

brain given by Professor Owen in that year, in a lecture to the Royal

Institution, in which a considerable part of the cerebellum of the

gorilla was represented as uncovered.*

(* "Athenaeum" Report of Royal Institution Lecture, March

23, 1861, and reference to it by Professor Owen as to

Gorilla, ibid. March 30 page 434.)

In the same memoir, it is remarked that in the Maimon Baboon the

cerebrum not only covers but "extends backwards even beyond the

cerebellum."*

(* For Report of Professor Owen's Cambridge British

Association paper see "Medical Times" October 11, 1862 page

373.)

This baboon, therefore, possesses a posterior lobe, according to every

description yet given of such a lobe, including a new definition of

the same lately proposed by Professor Owen. For the posterior lobe was

formerly considered to be that part of the cerebrum which covers the

cerebellum, whereas Professor Owen defines it as that part which covers

the posterior third of the cerebellum, and extends beyond it.

We may, therefore, consider the attempt to distinguish the brain of

Man from that of the ape on the ground of newly-discovered cerebral

characters, presenting differences in kind, as virtually abandoned by

its originator, and if the sub-class Archencephala is to be retained, it

must depend on differences in degree, as, for example, the vast increase

of the brain in Man, as compared with that of the highest ape, "in

absolute size, and the still greater superiority in relative size to the

bulk and weight of the body."*

(* Owen, ibid. page 373.)

If we ask why this character, though well known to Cuvier and other

great anatomists before our time, was not considered by them to entitle

Man, physically considered, to claim a more distinct place in the group

called Primates than that of a separate order, or, according to others,

a separate genus or family only, we shall find the answer thus concisely

stated by Professor Huxley in his new work, before cited:--

"So far as I am aware, no human cranium belonging to an adult man has

yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than 62 cubic inches, the

smallest cranium observed in any race of men, by Morton, measuring 63

cubic inches; while on the other hand, the most capacious gorilla skull

yet measured has a content of not more than 34 1/2 cubic inches. Let us

assume for simplicity's sake, that the lowest man's skull has twice

the capacity of the highest gorilla's. No doubt this is a very striking

difference, but it loses much of its apparent systematic value,

when viewed by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts

respecting cranial capacities.

"The first of these is, that the difference in the volume of the cranial

cavity of different races of mankind is far greater, absolutely, than

that between the lowest man and the highest ape, while, relatively,

it is about the same; for the largest human skull measured by Morton

contained 114 cubic inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the

capacity of the smallest, while its absolute preponderance of over 50

cubic inches is far greater than that by which the lowest adult male

human cranium surpasses the largest of the gorillas (62 minus 34 1/2 =

27 1/2). Secondly, the adult crania of gorillas which have as yet been

measured, differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum

capacity being 34.5 cubic inches, the minimum 24 cubic inches; and,

thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the

cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as much

relatively below those of the higher apes, as the latter fall below

Man."*

(* Huxley, "Evidence as to Man's place in Nature" London

1863 page 78. )

Are we then to conclude that differences in mental power have no

intimate connection with the comparative volume of the brain? We cannot

draw such an inference, because the highest and most civilised races of

Man exceed in the average of their cranial capacity the lowest races,

the European brain, for example, being larger than that of the negro,

and somewhat more convoluted and less symmetrical, and those apes, on

the other hand, which approach nearest to Man in the form and volume

of their brain being more intelligent than the Lemurs, or still lower

divisions of the mammalia, such as the Rodents and Marsupials, which

have smaller brains. But the extraordinary intelligence of the elephant

and dog, so far exceeding that of the larger part of the Quadrumana,

although their brains are of a type much more remote from the human, may

serve to convince us how far we are as yet from understanding the

real nature of the dependence of intellectual superiority on cerebral

structure.

Professor Rolleston, in reference to this subject, remarks, that "even

if it were to be proved that the differences between Man's brain and

that of the ape are differences entirely of quantity, there is

no reason, in the nature of things, why so many and such weighty

differences in degree should not amount to a difference in kind.

"Differences of degree and differences of kind are, it is true, mutually

exclusive terms in the language of the schools; but whether they are so

also in the laboratory of Nature, we may very well doubt."*

(* Report of a Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution by

Professor George Rolleston "On the Brain of Man and Animals"

"Medical Gazette" March 15, 1862 page 262.)

The same physiologist suggests, that as there is considerable plasticity

in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the

adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of

the development theory seem to do, that each advance in psychical power

depends on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul,

or the higher intellectual and moral faculties, play the first instead

of the second part in a progressive scheme?

INTELLIGENCE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS COMPARED TO THAT OF MAN.

Ever since the days of Leibnitz, metaphysicians who have attempted to

draw a line of demarcation between the intelligence of the lower animals

and that of Man, or between instinct and reason, have experienced

difficulties analogous to those which the modern anatomist encounters

when he tries to distinguish the brain of an ape from that of Man by

some characters more marked than those of mere size and weight, which

vary so much in individuals of the same species, whether simian or

human.

Professor Agassiz, after declaring that as yet we scarcely possess the

most elementary information requisite for a scientific comparison of the

instincts and faculties of animals with those of Man, confesses that he

cannot say in what the mental faculties of a child differ from those of

a young chimpanzee. He also observes, that "the range of the passions of

animals is as extensive as that of the human mind, and I am at a loss to

perceive a difference of kind between them, however much they may differ

in degree and in the manner in which they are expressed. The gradations

of the moral faculties among the higher animals and Man are, moreover,

so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of

responsibility and consciousness would certainly be an exaggeration of

the difference between animals and Man. There exists, besides, as much

individuality within their respective capabilities among animals as

among Man, as every sportsman, or every keeper of menageries, or every

farmer and shepherd can testify, who has had a large experience with

wild, or tamed, or domesticated animals. This argues strongly in favour

of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle, similar

to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places Man so

much above animals. Yet the principle exists unquestionably, and whether

it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it presents, in the whole range

of organised beings, a series of phenomena closely linked together, and

upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but

the very permanence of the specific differences which characterise every

organ. Most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality

of Man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living

beings."*

(* Contributions to the "Natural History of the United

States of North America" volume 1 part 1 pages 60 and 64.)

Professor Huxley, when commenting on a passage in Professor Owen's

memoir, above cited, argues that there is a unity in psychical as in

physical plan among animated beings, and adds, that although he cannot

go so far as to say that "the determination of the difference between

Homo and Pithecus is the anatomist's difficulty," yet no impartial judge

can doubt that the roots, as it were, of those great faculties which

confer on Man his immeasurable superiority above all other animate

things are traceable far down into the animate world. The dog, the cat,

and the parrot, return love for our love and hatred for our hatred. They

are capable of shame and of sorrow, and though they may have no logic

nor conscious ratiocination, no one who has watched their ways can

doubt that they possess that power of rational cerebration which evolves

reasonable acts from the premises furnished by the senses--a process

which takes fully as large a share as conscious reason in human

activity.*

(* "Natural History Review" Number 1 January 1861 page 68.)

GROUNDS FOR REFERRING MAN TO A DISTINCT KINGDOM OF NATURE.

Few if any of the authors above cited, while they admit so fully the

analogy which exists between the faculties of Man and the inferior

animals, are disposed to underrate the enormous gap which separates Man

from the brutes, and if they scarcely allow him to be referable to

a distinct order, and much less to a separate sub-class, on purely

physical grounds, it does not follow that they would object to the

reasoning of M. Quatrefages, who says, in his work on the "Unity of

the Human Species," that Man must form a kingdom by himself if once we

permit his moral and intellectual endowments to have their due weight in

classification.

As to his organisation, he observes, "We find in the mammalia nearly

absolute identity of anatomical structure, bone for bone, muscle for

muscle, nerve for nerve--similar organs performing like functions. It is

not by a vertical position on his feet, the os sublime of Ovid, which he

shares with the penguin, nor by his mental faculties, which, though more

developed, are fundamentally the same as those of animals, nor by his

powers of perception, will, memory, and a certain amount of reason, nor

by articulate speech, which he shares with birds and some mammalia,

and by which they express ideas comprehended not only by individuals of

their own species but often by Man, nor is it by the faculties of the

heart, such as love and hatred, which are also shared by quadrupeds and

birds, but it is by something completely foreign to the mere animal, and

belonging exclusively to Man, that we must establish a separate kingdom

for him (page 21). These distinguishing characters," he goes on to say,

"are the abstract notion of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and

vice, or the moral faculty, and a belief in a world beyond ours, and in

certain mysterious beings, or a Being of a higher nature than ours,

whom we ought to fear or revere; in other words, the religious

faculty."--page 23.

By these two attributes the moral and the religious, not common to man

and the brutes, M. Quatrefages proposes to distinguish the human from

the animal kingdom.

But he omits to notice one essential character, which Dr. Sumner, the

late Archbishop of Canterbury, brought out in strong relief fifty years

ago in his "Records of Creation." "There are writers," he observes, "who

have taken an extraordinary pleasure in levelling the broad distinction

which separates Man from the Brute Creation. Misled to a false

conclusion by the infinite variety of Nature's productions, they have

described a chain of existence connecting the vegetable with the animal

world, and the different orders of animals one with another, so as to

rise by an almost imperceptible gradation from the tribe of Simiae

to the lowest of the human race, and from these upwards to the most

refined. But if a comparison were to be drawn, it should be taken, not

from the upright form, which is by no means confined to mankind, nor

even from the vague term reason, which cannot always be accurately

separated from instinct, but from that power of progressive and

improvable reason, which is Man's peculiar and exclusive endowment."

"It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on fact, that there

is less difference between the highest brute animal and the lowest

savage than between the savage and the most improved Man. But, in order

to warrant the pretended analogy, it ought to be also true that this

lowest savage is no more capable of improvement than the Chimpanzee or

Orang-outang."

"Animals," he adds, "are born what they are intended to remain. Nature

has bestowed upon them a certain rank, and limited the extent of their

capacity by an impassable decree. Man she has empowered and obliged

to become the artificer of his own rank in the scale of beings by the

peculiar gift of improvable reason."*

(* "Records of Creation" volume 2 chapter 2 2nd edition

1816.)

We have seen that Professor Agassiz, in his "Essay on Classification,"

above cited, speaks of the existence in every animal of "an immaterial

principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior

endowments, places man so much above animals;" and he remarks, "that

most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of

Man, apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living

beings."

Although the author has no intention by this remark to impugn the truth

of the great doctrine alluded to, it may be well to observe, that if

some of the arguments in favour of a future state are applicable in

common to Man and the lower animals, they are by no means those which

are the weightiest and most relied on. It is no doubt true that, in

both, the identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form and

structure which take place during the passage from the infant to the

adult state, and from that to old age, and the loss again and again

of every particle of matter which had entered previously into the

composition of the body during its growth, and the substitution of new

elements in their place, while the individual remains always the same,

carries the analogy a step farther. But beyond this we cannot push the

comparison. We cannot imagine this world to be a place of trial and

moral discipline for any of the inferior animals, nor can any of them

derive comfort and happiness from faith in a hereafter. To Man alone is

given this belief, so consonant to his reason, and so congenial to the

religious sentiments implanted by nature in his soul, a doctrine which

tends to raise him morally and intellectually in the scale of being, and

the fruits of which are, therefore, most opposite in character to those

which grow out of error and delusion.

The opponents of the theory of transmutation sometimes argue that, if

there had been a passage by variation from the lower Primates to Man,

the geologist ought ere this to have detected some fossil remains of the

intermediate links of the chain. But what we have said respecting the

absence of gradational forms between the Recent and Pliocene mammalia

may serve to show the weakness in the present state of science of any

argument based on such negative evidence, especially in the case of Man,

since we have not yet reached those pages of the great book of nature,

in which alone we have any right to expect to find records of the

missing links alluded to. The countries of the anthropomorphous apes are

the tropical regions of Africa, and the islands of Borneo and Sumatra,

lands which may be said to be quite unknown in reference to their

Pliocene and Pleistocene mammalia. Man is an old-world type, and it is

not in Brazil, the only equatorial region where ossiferous caverns have

yet been explored, that the discovery, in a fossil state, of extinct

forms allied to the human, could be looked for. Lund, a Danish

naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and armadilloes,

but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the American type, and,

therefore, widely departing in their dentition and some other characters

from the Primates of the old world.

At some future day, when many hundred species of extinct quadrumana may

have been brought to light, the naturalist may speculate with advantage

on this subject; at present we must be content to wait patiently, and

not to allow our judgment respecting transmutation to be influenced by

the want of evidence, which it would be contrary to analogy to look for

in Pleistocene deposits in any districts, which as yet we have carefully

examined. For, as we meet with extinct kangaroos and wombats in

Australia, extinct llamas and sloths in South America, so in equatorial

Africa, and in certain islands of the East Indian Archipelago, may

we hope to meet hereafter with lost types of the anthropoid Primates,

allied to the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang. [44]

Europe, during the Pliocene period, seems not to have enjoyed a climate

fitting it to be the habitation of the quadrumanous mammalia; but we no

sooner carry back our researches into Miocene times, where plants and

insects, like those of Oeningen, and shells, like those of the Faluns of

the Loire, would imply a warmer temperature both of sea and land, than

we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north of the Alps and

Pyrenees. Among the few species already detected, two at least belong to

the anthropomorphous class. One of these, the Dryopithecus of Lartet, a

gibbon or long-armed ape, about equal to man in stature, was obtained

in the year 1856 in the Upper Miocene strata at Sansan, near the foot

of the Pyrenees in the South of France, and one bone of the same ape is

reported to have been since procured from a deposit of corresponding age

at Eppelsheim, near Darmstadt, in a latitude answering to that of the

southern counties of England.*

(* Owen, "Geologist" November 1862.)

But according to the doctrine of progression it is not in these

Miocene strata, but in those of Pliocene and Pleistocene date, in

more equatorial regions, that there will be the greatest chance of

discovering hereafter some species more highly organised than the

gorilla and chimpanzee.

The only reputed fossil monkey of Eocene date, namely, that found in

1840 at Kyson, in Suffolk, and so determined by Professor Owen, has

recently been pronounced by the same anatomist, after re-examination,

and when he had ampler materials at his command, to be a pachyderm.

M. Rutimeyer,* however, an able osteologist, referred to in the earlier

chapters of this work, has just announced the discovery in Eocene

strata, in the Swiss Jura, of a monkey allied to the lemurs, but as

he has only obtained as yet a small fragment of a jaw with three molar

teeth, we must wait for fuller information before we confidently rely

on the claims of his Coenopithecus lemuroides to take rank as one of the

Primates.

(* Rutimeyer, "Eocene Saugethiere" Zurich 1862.)

HALLAM ON MAN'S PLACE IN THE CREATION.

Hallam, in his "Literature of Europe," after indulging in some profound

reflections on "the thoughts of Pascal," and the theological dogmas of

his school respecting the fallen nature of Man, thus speaks of Man's

place in the creation--"It might be wandering from the proper subject

of these volumes if we were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether,

while the creation of a world so full of evil must ever remain the most

inscrutable of mysteries, we might not be led some way in tracing the

connection of moral and physical evil in mankind, with his place in that

creation, and especially, whether the law of continuity, which it has

not pleased his Maker to break with respect to his bodily structure, and

which binds that, in the unity of one great type, to the lower forms of

animal life by the common conditions of nourishment, reproduction, and

self-defence, has not rendered necessary both the physical appetites

and the propensities which terminate in self; whether again the superior

endowments of his intellectual nature, his susceptibility of

moral emotion, and of those disinterested affections which, if

not exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than an inferior

being--above all, the gifts of conscience and a capacity to know God,

might not be expected, even beforehand, by their conflict with the

animal passions, to produce some partial inconsistencies, some anomalies

at least, which he could not himself explain in so compound a being.

Every link in the long chain of creation does not pass by easy

transition into the next. There are necessary chasms, and, as it were,

leaps from one creature to another, which, though no exceptions to the

law of continuity, are accommodations of it to a new series of being.

If Man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an

ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made

the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute, who

wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land

between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake

of both!"*

(* Hallam, "Introduction to the Literature of Europe" etc.

volume 4 page 162.)

The law of continuity here spoken of, as not being violated by

occasional exceptions, or by leaps from one creature to another, is not

the law of variation and natural selection above explained (Chapter 21),

but that unity of plan supposed to exist in the Divine Mind, whether

realised or not materially and in the visible creation, of which the

"links do not pass by an easy transition" the one into the other, at

least as beheld by us.

Dr. Asa Gray, an eminent American botanist, to whom we are indebted

for a philosophical essay of great merit on the "Origin of Species by

Variation and Natural Selection," has well observed, when speaking of

the axiom of Leibnitz, "Natura non agit saltatim," that nature secures

her ends and makes her distinctions, on the whole, manifest and real,

but without any important breaks or long leaps. "We need not wonder that

gradations between species and varieties should occur, or that genera

and other groups should not be absolutely limited, though they are

represented to be so in our systems. The classifications of the

naturalist define abruptly where nature more or less blends. Our systems

are nothing if not definite."

The same writer reminds us that "plants and animals are so different,

that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would be to find points of

comparison, whereas, with the naturalist, it is all the other way.

All the broad differences vanish one by one as we approach the

lower confines of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and no absolute

distinction whatever is now known between them."*

(* Gray, "Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural

Theology" Trubner & Co. London 1861 page 55.)

The author of an elaborate review of Darwin's "Origin of Species,"

himself an accomplished geologist, declares that if we embrace the

doctrine of the continuous variation of all organic forms from the

lowest to the highest, including Man as the last link in the chain of

being, there must have been a transition from the instinct of the brute

to the noble mind of Man; and in that case, "where," he asks, "are the

missing links, and at what point of his progressive improvement did Man

acquire the spiritual part of his being, and become endowed with the

awful attribute of immortality?"*

(* Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life "Fraser's

Magazine" July 1860 page 88.)

Before we raise objections of this kind to a scientific hypothesis,

it would be well to pause and inquire whether there are no analogous

enigmas in the constitution of the world around us, some of which

present even greater difficulties than that here stated. When we

contemplate, for example, the many hundred millions of human beings who

now people the earth, we behold thousands who are doomed to helpless

imbecility, and we may trace an insensible gradation between them

and the half-witted, and from these again to individuals of perfect

understanding, so that tens of thousands must have existed in the course

of ages, who in their moral and intellectual condition, have exhibited

a passage from the irrational to the rational, or from the irresponsible

to the responsible. Moreover we may infer from the returns of the

Registrar General of births and deaths in Great Britain, and from

Quetelet's statistics of Belgium, that one-fourth of the human race die

in early infancy, nearly one-tenth before they are a month old; so that

we may safely affirm that millions perish on the earth in every century,

in the first few hours of their existence. To assign to such individuals

their appropriate psychological place in the creation is one of the

unprofitable themes on which theologians and metaphysicians have

expended much ingenious speculation.

The philosopher, without ignoring these difficulties, does not allow

them to disturb his conviction that "whatever is, is right," nor do they

check his hopes and aspirations in regard to the high destiny of his

species; but he also feels that it is not for one who is so often

confounded by the painful realities of the present, to test the

probability of theories respecting the past, by their agreement or want

of agreement with some ideal of a perfect universe which those who are

opposed to opinions may have pictured to themselves.

We may also demur to the assumption that the hypothesis of variation

and natural selection obliges us to assume that there was an absolutely

insensible passage from the highest intelligence of the inferior

animals to the improvable reason of Man. The birth of an individual

of transcendent genius, of parents who have never displayed any

intellectual capacity above the average standard of their age or race,

is a phenomenon not to be lost sight of, when we are conjecturing

whether the successive steps in advance by which a progressive scheme

has been developed may not admit of occasional strides, constituting

breaks in an otherwise continuous series of psychical changes.

The inventors of useful arts, the poets and prophets of the early stages

of a nation's growth, the promulgators of new systems of religion,

ethics, and philosophy, or of new codes of laws, have often been looked

upon as messengers from Heaven, and after their death have had divine

honours paid to them, while fabulous tales have been told of the

prodigies which accompanied their birth. Nor can we wonder that such

notions have prevailed when we consider what important revolutions

in the moral and intellectual world such leading spirits have brought

about; and when we reflect that mental as well as physical attributes

are transmissible by inheritance, so that we may possibly discern in

such leaps the origin of the superiority of certain races of mankind.

In our own time the occasional appearance of such extraordinary

mental powers may be attributed to atavism; but there must have been

a beginning to the series of such rare and anomalous events. If, in

conformity with the theory of progression, we believe mankind to have

risen slowly from a rude and humble starting point, such leaps may have

successively introduced not only higher and higher forms and grades of

intellect, but at a much remoter period may have cleared at one bound

the space which separated the highest stage of the unprogressive

intelligence of the inferior animals from the first and lowest form of

improvable reason manifested by Man.

To say that such leaps constitute no interruption to the ordinary course

of nature is more than we are warranted in affirming. In the case of the

occasional birth of an individual of superior genius there is certainly

no break in the regular genealogical succession; and when all the mists

of mythological fiction are dispelled by historical criticism, when it

is acknowledged that the earth did not tremble at the nativity of the

gifted infant and that the face of heaven was not full of fiery shapes,

still a mighty mystery remains unexplained, and it is the ORDER of the

phenomena, and not their CAUSE, which we are able to refer to the usual

course of nature.

Dr. Asa Gray, in the excellent essay already cited, has pointed out that

there is no tendency in the doctrine of Variation and Natural Selection

to weaken the foundations of Natural Theology, for, consistently with

the derivative hypothesis of species, we may hold any of the popular

views respecting the manner in which the changes of the natural world

are brought about. We may imagine "that events and operations in general

go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at the first, and without

any subsequent interference, or we may hold that now and then, and only

now and then, there is a direct interposition of the Deity; or, lastly,

we may suppose that all the changes are carried on by the immediate

orderly and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of the

intelligent, efficient Cause." They who maintain that the origin of

an individual, as well as the origin of a species or a genus, can be

explained only by the direct action of the creative cause, may retain

their favourite theory compatibly with the doctrine of transmutation.

Professor Agassiz, having observed that, "while human thought is

consecutive, divine thought is simultaneous," Dr. Asa Gray has replied

that, "if divine thought is simultaneous, we have no right to affirm the

same of divine action."

The whole course of nature may be the material embodiment of a

preconcerted arrangement; and if the succession of events be explained

by transmutation, the perpetual adaptation of the organic world to new

conditions leaves the argument in favour of design, and therefore of a

designer, as valid as ever; "for to do any work by an instrument must

require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of more than of

less power, than to do it directly."*

(* Asa Gray, "Natural Selection not inconsistent with

Natural Theology" Trubner & Co. London 1861 page 55.)

As to the charge of materialism brought against all forms of the

development theory, Dr. Gray has done well to remind us that "of the

two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both

profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the

theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory, that it was

subversive of natural religion."*

(* Ibid. page 31.)

It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic tendency, the

supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods

of life--sensation--instinct--the intelligence of the higher mammalia

bordering on reason--and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself,

presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over

matter.

NOTES.

[Footnote 1: The classification of the strata above the Chalk, as at

present employed by the majority of British geologists, is merely a

slight modification of that proposed by Lyell in 1833. The subdivisions

generally recognised are as follows (Lake and Rastall, "Textbook of

Geology," London, 1910, page 438):--

Neogene:

Pleistocene

Pliocene

Miocene.

Palaeogene:

Oligocene

Eocene.

This differs chiefly from Lyell's classification in the introduction of

the term Oligocene for the upper part of the original Eocene, which was

somewhat unwieldy. In the earlier editions of the "Antiquity of Man" and

of the "Principles of Geology," the strata here classed as Pleistocene

were designated as Post-pliocene. The term "diluvium," now obsolete

in Britain but still lingering on the Continent, is equivalent to

Pleistocene. This subdivision is still sometimes separated from the

Tertiary, as the Quaternary epoch. This, however, is unnecessary and

indeed objectionable, as attributing too great importance to

relatively insignificant deposits. There is no definite break, either

stratigraphical or palaeontological, at the top of the Pliocene, and

it is most natural to regard the Tertiary epoch as still in progress.

Equally unnecessary is the separation of the post-glacial deposits

as "Recent," a distinction which still prevails in many quarters,

apparently with the sole object of adding another name to an already

over-burdened list.]

[Footnote 2: The table of strata here printed is not that given by

Lyell in the later editions of the "Antiquity of Man." This would have

required so much explanation in the light of modern work that it was

thought better to abolish it altogether and to substitute an entirely

new table, which is to some extent a compromise between the numerous

classifications now in vogue. In this form it is only strictly

applicable to the British Isles, though the divisions adopted in other

countries are generally similar, and in many cases identical.]

[Footnote 3: A similar succession of forest-beds, five in number, has

been observed in the peat of the Fenland, near Ely. Each bed consists

for the most part of a single species of tree, and a definite succession

of oak, yew, Scotch fir, alder, and willow has been made out. The forest

beds are supposed to indicate temporarily drier conditions, due either

to changes of climate or to slight uplift of the land, the growth of

peat being renewed during periods of damp climate or of depression of

the land. (See Clement Reid, "Submerged Forests," Cambridge, 1913.)]

[Footnote 4: Since the "Stone Age," in the sense in which the term is

here employed, obviously occupied an enormous lapse of time and embraced

very different stages of culture, it has been found convenient to

subdivide it into two primary subdivisions. For these Lord Avebury

proposed in 1865 the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic. (" Prehistoric

Times," London, 1865, page 60.) The first comprises the ages during

which man fabricated flint implements solely by chipping, whereas

the implements of Neolithic Age are polished by rubbing. But there

is another and more fundamental distinction. Palaeolithic man was

exclusively a hunter, and consequently nomadic in his habits; Neolithic

man possessed domesticated animals and cultivated crops. A pastoral

and agricultural life implies a settled abode, and these are found, for

example, in the lake-villages of Switzerland. The "kitchen-middens" of

Denmark also indicate long continuance in one place, in this instance

the seashore.]

[Footnote 5: The famous case of the so-called Temple of Serapis at

Pozzuoli, has given rise to a considerable literature. The subject is

discussed by Suess at length ("Des Antlitz der Erde," Vienna, 1888,

volume 2 page 463, or English translation, "The Face of the Earth,"

Oxford, 1904). This author shows that the whole region is highly

volcanic, and consequently very liable to disturbance, much relative

movement of land and sea having occurred within historic times. Hence

the facts here observed cannot be taken as evidence for any general

upward or downward movement of wide-spread or universal extent.]

[Footnote 6: Darwin, "Voyage of the Beagle," chapter 14, and a much

fuller account in the same author's "Geological Observations on the

Volcanic Islands and Parts of South America Visited during the Voyage of

H.M.S. Beagle," chapter 9.]

[Footnote 7: For a full discussion of the evidence for and against

continental elevation and subsidence in general, and as affecting

the British Isles and Scandinavia in particular, see Sir A. Geikie's

Presidential Address to the Geological Society for 1904 (" Proceedings

of the Geological Society"' volume 60, 1904, pages 80 to 104.). Here it

is shown that the oldest raised beaches of Scotland are pre-glacial, and

the same also holds for the south of Ireland.]

[Footnote 8: The argument here employed is fallacious, since the mere

existence of a distinct beach implies a pause in the movement and a long

continuance at one level. It is impossible to form any estimate of the

lapse of time necessary for the building up of a beach-terrace. We can

only, in some cases, obtain a measure of the time that elapsed between

the formation of two successive beaches, as in this instance.]

[Footnote 9: The "strand lines," or raised beaches of Norway, have given

rise to much discussion, of which a summary will be found in the address

cited in Note 7.]

[Footnote 10: A considerable number of skulls and skeletons of the

Neanderthal type have now been found in different parts of Southern

Europe, extending from Belgium to Gibraltar and Croatia, and it is now

known that this type of skull is associated with flint implements of

Mousterian Age. (See Note 12.)]

[Footnote 11: The most important discovery of recent years in this

connection is that made in Sussex by Mr. C. Dawson and Dr. A. Smith

Woodward; this find is described in great detail in the "Quarterly

Journal of the Geological Society," volume 69, 1913, pages 117 to 151.

At a height of about 80 feet above the present level of the River Ouse,

at Piltdown, near Uckfield, is a gravel, containing many brown flints of

peculiar character, some of which are implements of Chellean or earlier

type, associated with some remains of Pleistocene animals and a few of

older date, derived from Pliocene deposits. Embedded in this gravel were

found fragments of a human skull and lower jaw of very remarkable type,

showing in some respects distinctly simian characters, while in other

respects it is less ape-like than the Mousterian skulls of Neanderthal

and other localities. For this form the name of Eoanthropus has been

proposed, thus constituting a new genus of the Hominidae.]

[Footnote 12: It will be well at this point to give a brief summary of

the modern classification of the Palaeolithic implement-bearing

deposits of Europe. From the labours of many geologists and prehistoric

archaeologists, especially in France, a definite succession of types

of implement has been established, and in some cases it has been found

possible to correlate these with actual human remains and with certain

well-marked events in the physical history of Pleistocene times,

especially with the advance and retreat of ice-sheets. The present state

of our knowledge is admirably summarised by Professor Sollas ("Ancient

Hunters," London, 1911), and from that work the following note is

condensed.

The stages of Palaeolithic culture now recognised are as follows:--

Azilian

Magdalenian

Solutrean

Aurignacian

Mousterian

Acheulean

Chellean

Strepyan

Mesvinian.

Below the Mesvinian comes the nebulous region of "eoliths," which are

not yet definitely proved to be of human workmanship. The Neanderthal

skull belongs to the Mousterian stage, but the oldest known definitely

human remain, the jaw from the Mauer sands near Heidelberg, may be

older than any of these, indeed by some it is assigned to the first

interglacial period of Penck and Bruckner (see Note 32). For figures

of the types of implement characterising each period, see "Guide to the

Antiquities of the Stone Age in the Department of British and Medieval

Antiquities," British Museum, 2nd edition, London, 1911, pages 1 to 74.

This publication gives an admirable summary of recent knowledge on this

subject. For an excellent and critical summary of the latest researches

on Palaeolithic man up till the end of the Aurignacian period, see

Duckworth, "Prehistoric Man," Cambridge, 1912. See also note 44.]

[Footnote 13: Sir John Evans, K.C.B. (1823-1908), was one of the

foremost authorities on prehistoric archaeology and a prolific writer

on the subject. His best known work is "The Ancient Stone Implements,

Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain," 2nd edition, 1897.]

[Footnote 14: By the expression "Celtic weapons of the stone period" is

presumably meant Neolithic implements, with polished surfaces.]

[Footnote 15: It has recently been shown that the growth of peat is a

very slow process, and at the present time it is in many places either

at a standstill or even in a state of retrogression. In the peat-mosses

of Scotland, Lewis has traced nine successive layers, marked by

different floras. The lowest of these and another at a higher level are

distinctly of an arctic character, the intermediate forest beds, on the

other hand, indicate periods of milder climate, when the limit of the

growth of trees was at a higher level in Scotland than is now the case.

From these facts it is certain that the peat-mosses of Scotland and

northern England date back at least as far as the later stages of the

glacial period, and indicate at least one mild interglacial episode,

when the climate was somewhat warmer than it now is. (See Lewis,

"Science Progress," volume 2, 1907, page 307.) Hence the statements of

the French workmen, here quoted, do not possess much significance.]

[Footnote 16: Cyrena fluminalis is very abundant in the gravels of an

old terrace of the River Cam, at Barnwell, in the suburbs of Cambridge,

and also in glacial gravels at Kelsey Hill in Holderness. It is a very

remarkable fact that this shell, now an inhabitant of warm regions,

should be so abundant in these Pleistocene deposits, in close

association with glacial accumulations.]

[Footnote 17: The implement-bearing deposits of Hoxne, in Suffolk, were

investigated with great care by a committee of the British Association,

and the results were published in a special and detailed report ("The

Relation of Palaeolithic Man to the Glacial Epoch," "Report of the

British Association," Liverpool, 1896, pages 400 to 415). The deposit

consists of a series of lacustrine or fluviatile strata with plant

remains, some being arctic in character, resting on Chalky Boulder Clay,

and this again on sand. The Palaeolithic deposits are all clearly later

than the latest boulder-clay of East Anglia, and between their formation

and that of the glacial deposits at least two important climatic changes

took place, indicating a very considerable lapse of time.

Mention may conveniently be made here of the supposed discovery of the

remains of pre-glacial man at Ipswich, which appears to be founded

on errors of observation. The boulder-clay above the interment is,

according to the best authorities, merely a landslip or flow.]

[Footnote 18: It has been suggested with a considerable degree of

probability, that in Auvergne volcanic eruptions persisted even into

historic times. The subject is obscure, depending on the interpretation

of difficult passages in two Latin chronicles of the fifth century. The

most obvious meaning of both passages would certainly appear to be the

occurrence of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but attempts have

been made to explain them as referring to some artificial conflagration,

possibly the burning of a town by an invader. (See Bonney, "Volcanoes,"

3rd edition, London, 1913, page 129.)]

[Footnote 19: In the early days of glacial geology in Britain, it

was commonly accepted that the phenomena could be most satisfactorily

explained on the hypothesis of a general submergence of the northern

parts of the country to a depth of many hundreds of feet, and this in

spite of the original comparison by Agassiz of the glacial deposits

of Britain to those of the Alps. In later times, however, a school of

geologists arose who attributed the glaciation of Britain to land-ice

of the Continental or Greenland type. Of late years this school has been

dominant in British geology, with a few notable exceptions, of whom the

most important is Professor Bonney. The difficulties presented by both

theories are almost equally great, and at the present time, in spite of

the vehemence of the supporters of the land-ice theory, it is impossible

to hold any dogmatic views on the subject. Against the doctrine of

submergence is the absence of glacial deposits in places where they

would naturally be expected to occur if the whole of the British Isles

north of the Thames and Bristol Channel had been covered by the sea,

together with the very general absence of sea-shells in the deposits.

The objections to the land-ice hypothesis are largely of a mechanical

nature. If we take into account the lateral extent and the thickness

that can be assigned to the ice-sheet, we are at once confronted by very

considerable difficulties as to the sufficiency of the driving-power

behind the ice. Another great difficulty is the shallowness of the North

Sea, in which a comparatively thin mass of ice would run aground at

almost any point. It has been calculated that the maximum slope of the

surface of the ice from Norway to the English coast could not exceed

half a degree, and it is therefore difficult to see what force could

compel it to move forward at all, much less to climb steep slopes in the

way postulated by the extremists of this school.]

[Footnote 20: The most complete account of the geology of the Norfolk

coast is contained in "The Geology of Cromer," by Clement Reid ("Memoir

of the Geological Survey"). (See also Harmer, "The Pleistocene Period

in the Eastern Counties of England," "Geology in the Field, the Jubilee

Volume of the Geologists Association," 1909, chapter 4.). Above the

Norwich Crag several more subdivisions are now recognised, and the

complete succession of the Pliocene and Pleistocene strata of East

Anglia may be summarised as follows:--

Pleistocene:

Peat and Alluvium

Gravel Terraces of the present river systems

Gravels of the old river-systems

Plateau gravels

Chalky boulder-clay

Interglacial sands and gravels and Contorted Drift

Cromer Till

Arctic Plant Bed.

Pliocene:

Cromer Forest Series

Weybourn Crag

Chillesford Crag

Norwich Crag

Red Crag

Coralline Crag.

[Footnote 21: It is now generally agreed that the tree-stumps in the

Cromer Forest bed are not in the position of growth. Many of them are

upside down or lying on their sides, and they were probably floated into

their present position by the waters of a river flowing to the north.

This river was a tributary of the Rhine which then flowed for several

hundred miles over a plain now forming the bed of the North Sea,

collecting all the drainage of eastern England, and debouching into the

North Atlantic somewhere to the south of the Faroe Isles. (See Harmer,

"The Pleistocene Period in the Eastern Counties of England," "Geological

Association Jubilee Volume," London, 1909, pages 103 to 123.)]

[Footnote 22: Of late years an enormous number of characteristic rocks

from Norway and Sweden have been recognised in the drifts of Eastern

England, as far south as Essex and Middlesex. One of the most easily

identifiable types is the well-known Rhombporphyry of the Christiania

Fjord, a rock which occurs nowhere else in the world, and is quite

unmistakable in appearance. Along with it are many of the distinctive

soda-syenites found in the same district, the granites of southern

Sweden, and many others. The literature of the subject is very large,

but many details may be found in the annual reports of the British

Association for the last twenty years.]

From a study of these erratics it has been found possible to draw

important conclusions as to the direction and sequence of the ice

streams which flowed over these regions during the different stages of

the glacial period.]

[Footnote 23: During his first crossing of Greenland from east to west,

Nansen attained a height of 9000 feet on a vast expanse of frozen snow,

and it is believed that towards the north the surface of this great

snow-plateau rises to even greater elevations. The surface of the snow

is perfectly clean and free from moraine-material. No rock in situ has

been seen in the interior of Greenland at a distance greater than 75

miles from the coast.

A great amount of valuable information concerning the glacial conditions

of Greenland is to be found in the "Meddelelser om Gronland," a Danish

publication, but containing many summaries in French or English. For

a good account of the phenomena seen in the coastal region of the west

coast, see Drygalski, "Gronland-Expedition," a large monograph published

by the Gesellschaft fur physischen Erdkunde, Berlin, 1897.]

[Footnote 24: The argument is here considerably understated. The

southern point of Greenland, Cape Farewell, is in the same latitude

as the Shetland Islands and Christiania, and only one degree north of

Stockholm; Disko is in about the same latitude as the North Cape. Hence

the inhabited portion of Greenland is in the same latitude as Norway

and Sweden, both fertile and well-populated countries. Even in Central

Norway, in the Gudbrandsdal and Romsdal, thick forests grow up to a

height of at least 3000 feet above sea-level, a much greater elevation

than trees now attain in the British Isles. This latter fact is probably

to be attributed to the protective effect of thick snow lying throughout

the winter.]

[Footnote 25: For a summary of the most recent views as to the

classification and succession of the glacial deposits of the British

Isles, see Lake an Rastall, "Textbook of Geology," London, 1910, pages

466 to 473. Reference may also be made to Jukes-Browne, "The Building of

the British Isles," London, 1912, pages 430 to 440.]

[Footnote 26: Glacier-lakes are fairly common among the fjords of the

west coast of Greenland, and illustrate very well what must have

been the state of affairs in Glen Roy at the time of formation of the

Parallel Roads.]

[Footnote 27: The high-level shell-bearing deposits of Moel Tryfan,

Gloppa, near Oswestry, and Macclesfield, have given rise to much

controversy between the supporters of submergence and of land-ice. At

Moel Tryfan certain sands and gravels, with erratics, at a height of

about 1350 feet, contain abundant marine shells, generally much broken.

The northern or seaward face of the hill is much plastered with drift,

but none is to be found on the landward side, and it is suggested that

the shell-bearing material is the ground-moraine of a great ice-sheet

that came in from the Irish Sea, and was forced up on to the Welsh

coast, just reaching the watershed, but failing to overtop it. With

regard to the explanation by submergence, the great objection is the

absence of marine drift on the landward side, which is very difficult to

explain if the whole had been submerged sufficiently to allow of normal

marine deposits at such a great height. The shell beds of Macclesfield

and Gloppa are at a less elevation but of essentially similar character.

The shell-bearing deposits of Moel Tryfan were examined by a committee

of the British Association. (See "Report of the British Association"

Dover, 1899, pages 414 to 423.) At the end of this report is an

extensive bibliography.]

[Footnote 28: During the last forty years the deep-sea dredging

expeditions of H. M.S. Challenger and others have shown the abundance

and variety of animal life at great depths, especially in the Arctic and

Antarctic seas. For a recent summary, see Murray and Hjort, "The Depths

of the Ocean," London, 1912.]

[Footnote 29: It is now generally admitted that these shell-beds in

Wexford are of Pliocene age, and they therefore have no bearing on the

subject under discussion.]

[Footnote 30: The boulder deposit at Selsey has been described by Mr.

Clement Reid ("Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," volume 48,

1892, page 355). Immediately above the Tertiary beds is a hard greenish

clay, full of derived Tertiary fossils and Pleistocene shells with large

flints and erratic blocks, some of the latter weighing several tons.

They include granite, greenstone, schist, slate, quartzite, and

sandstone, and most of them must have been transported for a long

distance. Above them are black muds with marine shells, then a shingle

beach, and above all the Coombe Rock. (See next note.)]

[Footnote 31: The Brighton elephant-bed and its equivalent, the Coombe

Rock, are fully described by Clement Reid ("On the Origin of Dry Chalk

Valleys and the Coombe Rock," "Quarterly Journal of the Geological

Society," volume 43, 1887, page 364). The Coombe Rock is a mass of

unstratified flints and Chalk debris filling the lower parts of the

dry valleys (Coombes) of the South Downs and gradually passing into

the brick-earth (loam) of the coastal plain. It is clearly a torrential

accumulation, and is supposed to have been formed while the Chalk was

frozen, thus preventing percolation of water and causing the surface

water to run off as strong streams. This must have occurred during some

part of the glacial period, which would naturally be a period of heavy

precipitation. Of very similar origin is the "Head" of Cornwall, a

surface deposit often rich in tinstone and other minerals of economic

value. The Coombe Rock has recently been correlated with deposits of

Mousterian Age.]

[Footnote 32: The former extension of the Alpine glaciers and the

deposits formed by them have been exhaustively investigated by Penck

and Bruckner ("Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter," 3 volumes, Leipzig, 1901 to

1909). In this monumental work the authors claim to have established the

occurrence of four periods of advance of the ice, to which they give the

names of Gunz, Mindel, Riss, and Wurm glaciations, with corresponding

interglacial genial episodes, when the climate was possibly even

somewhat warmer than now. Their conclusions and the data on which they

are established are summarised by Sollas (" Ancient Hunters," London,

1911, especially pages 18 to 28). For a general account of the glaciers

of the Alps and their accompanying phenomena, see Bonney, "The Building

of the Alps," London, 1912, pages 103 to 151.]

[Footnote 33: At the time of the maximum advance of the ice, during the

Riss period of Penck and Bruckner, the terminal moraine of the great

glacier of the Rhone extended as far as the city of Lyon, and towards

the north-east it became continuous with the similar moraine of the

Rhine glacier.]

[Footnote 34: For the successive phases of advance and retreat of the

Alpine glaciers, see the works quoted in Note 32.]

[Footnote 35: The Loess of Central Europe includes deposits of two

different ages. According to Penck the "Older Loess" was formed in the

period of warm and dry climate that intervened between the third and

fourth glacial episodes, while the "Younger Loess" is post-glacial.

Both divisions are for the most part aeolian deposits, formed by the

redistribution of fine glacial mud originally laid down in water and

carried by the wind often to considerable heights. A part, however, of

the so-called Loess of northern France, e.g. in the valley of the

Somme, is rain-wash, similar in character to the brick-earth of parts

of south-eastern England. The Older Loess contains Acheulean implements,

while the Younger Loess is of Aurignacian Age.

The greatest development of the Loess is in Central Asia and in China.

(See Richthofen, "China," Berlin, 1877.) In China the Loess reaches

a thickness of several thousand feet, and whole mountain-ranges are

sometimes almost completely buried in it. In the deserts of Central Asia

the formation of the Loess is still in progress. A very similar deposit,

called adobe, is also found in certain parts of the Mississippi valley.

The Loess is a fine calcareous silt or clay of a yellowish colour, quite

soft and crumbling between the fingers. However, it resists denudation

in a remarkable manner, and in China it often stands up in vertical

walls hundreds of feet in height. This property is probably assisted by

the presence of numerous fine tubes arranged vertically and lined with

calcium carbonate; these are supposed to have been formed in the first

place by fibrous rootlets.]

[Footnote 36: Although highly probable, it cannot yet be regarded as

conclusively demonstrated that the Pleistocene glaciations of Europe and

of North America were exactly contemporaneous. The ice--sheets in each

case radiated from independent centres which were not in the extreme

north of either continent, and were not in any way connected with a

general polar ice-cap. The European centre was over the Baltic region or

the south of Scandinavia, and the American centre in the neighbourhood

of Hudson's Bay. The southern margin of the American ice-sheet extended

about as far south as latitude 38 degrees north in the area lying south

of the Great Lakes, whereas the North European ice barely passed the

limit of 50 degrees north in Central Europe. This greater southward

extension in America was doubtless correlated with the same causes

as now produce the low winter temperatures of the eastern states,

especially the cold Newfoundland current. The literature of North

American glacial geology has now attained colossal dimensions, and it is

impossible to give here even a short abstract of the main conclusions.

For a general summary reference may be made to Chamberlin and Salisbury,

"Geology," volume 3; "Earth History," London and New York, 1905; or the

same authors' "Geology, Shorter Course," London and New York, 1909.]

[Footnote 37: During the last fifty years scarcely any geological

subject has given rise to a greater amount of speculation than the cause

of the Ice Age, and the solution of the problem is still apparently far

off. The theories put forward may for convenience be divided into three

groups, namely astronomical, geographical, and meteorological.

As examples of astronomical explanation, we may take the well-known

theory of Adhemar and Crohl, which is founded on changes in the

ellipticity of the earth's orbit. This is expounded and amplified by Sir

Robert Ball in his "Cause of an Ice Age." The weak point of this theory,

which is mathematically unassailable, is that it proves too much,

and postulates a constant succession of glacial periods throughout

earth-history, and for this there is no evidence. The geographical

explanations are chiefly founded on supposed changes in the distribution

of sea and land, with consequent diversion of cold and warm currents.

Another suggestion is that the glaciated areas had undergone elevation

into mountain regions, but this is in conflict with evidence for

submergence beneath the sea in certain cases. Meteorological hypotheses,

such as that of Harmer, founded on a different arrangement of air

pressures and wind-directions, seem to offer the most promising field

for exploration and future work, but it is clear that much still remains

to be explained.]

[Footnote 38: The reptile-bearing Elgin Sandstones are of Triassic Age,

and they contain a most remarkable assemblage of strange and eccentric

forms, especially Anomodont reptiles resembling those found in the

Karroo formation of South Africa.]

[Footnote 39: The meaning of this statement is not very clear. The

Conifers are not dicotyledons: their seeds contain numerous cotyledons,

up to twenty in number, and the whole plant, and especially the

reproductive system, belongs to a lower stage of development. The

argument here employed is therefore fallacious, and in point of fact the

different groups actually appeared in the order postulated by the

theory of evolution, namely: (1) Gymnosperms, (2) Monocotyledons,

(3) Dicotyledons. See Arber, "The Origin of Gymnosperms," "Science

Progress," volume 1, 1906, pages 222 to 237.]

[Footnote 40: The part of the manuscript read to Dr. Hooker in 1844

was undoubtedly the "Essay of 1844," forming the second part of the

"Foundations of the Origin of Species," a volume published by Sir

Francis Darwin on the occasion of the Darwin Centenary at Cambridge in

1909. (See also Darwin's "Life and Letters," volume 2 pages 16 to 18.)]

[Footnote 41: This projected larger work, which is often referred to in

the "Origin of Species," was never published as such, but Darwin's views

on various aspects of evolution were set forth in several later books,

such as "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," "The

Descent of Man," "Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised

by Insects," "Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants," "Insectivorous

Plants," and others.]

[Footnote 42: With this section compare the famous chapter with the same

title in the "Origin of Species."]

[Footnote 43: No attempt has been made to annotate this chapter, owing

to the impossibility of doing so within reasonable compass. Many of

the theories here quoted, and the conclusions drawn from them, have

not stood the test of time, and recent philological and ethnographical

research have clearly shown the danger of attempting to infer

the relationships of different peoples from their languages. The

modifications undergone by the languages themselves are also subject

to influences of such complex character, so largely artificial in their

origin, that any attempt to compare them with natural evolution in the

organic world must lead to false analogies. The chapter must be regarded

as an interesting exposition of one phase of Mid-Victorian scientific

thought, but having little real bearing on the subjects discussed in the

rest of the book.]

[Footnote 44: That the prophecy here given was justified is shown by

the discovery in Java in 1891, of the skull and parts of the skeleton

of Pithecanthropus erectus, a form which, according to the best

authorities, must be regarded as in many ways intermediate between

man and the apes, though perhaps with more human than ape-like

characteristics. For an account of the circumstances of its discovery

and a general description of the remains, see Sollas, "Ancient Hunters,"

London, 1911, pages 30 to 39 (with many references). Within the last

year or two interest in the ancestry of man has been greatly increased,

especially by the Piltdown discovery (see Note 11). This has led to

a revision of the whole subject, and the views formerly held have

undergone a certain amount of modification. It now seems certain that

the different types of culture as represented by the succession of

stages given in Note 12 do not correspond to a continuous development of

one single race of mankind. There is, undoubtedly, a great break between

the Mousterian and Aurignacian. Mousterian or Neanderthal man appears to

have become extinct, possibly having been exterminated by a migration of

the more highly developed Aurignacian race, which may be regarded as the

ancestor of modern man in Europe. It appears, therefore, that the really

important line of division comes, not as was formerly thought between

Palaeolithic and Neolithic, but in the middle of the Palaeolithic

between Mousterian and Aurignacian. Hence it appears that our

classification will in the near future have to undergo revision, since

the stages of culture from Aurignacian to Azilian show a much closer

affinity to the Neolithic than they do to the earlier Palaeolithic. At

the present time scarcely sufficient data are available to determine the

relationship of Pithecanthropus and Eoanthropus to the later types of

man. For an excellent summary of the most recent views see Thacker, "The

Significance of the Piltdown Discovery," "Science Progress," volume 8,

1913, page 275.]