which it was found, on the base of the cave, was five feet thick. The cranium exhibits many remarkable analogies to that of the chimpanzee, and has been stated by Professor Huxley to be the most ape-like skull he ever beheld. According to Professor Huxley, it resembles those of the apes, not only in the prodigious development of the superciliary prominences and the forward extension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the straightness of "the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward, from the superior occipital ridges." The capacity of the skull was equal to the mean deduced from the comparison of the highest and the lowest human skulls. Professor Huxley, calling attention to the amount of variation between the skulls of the Australian race, warns cautious reasoners not rashly to affirm that the Neanderthal and Engis skulls were necessarily of distinct races. At the same time, he does not affirm that the Engis and Neanderthal skulls belong to the Australian race, or that the ancient skulls belong to one and the same race.

Professor Waitz, of Marburg, has in his latest work,* the following observations in relation to the antiquity of man.

"The exact period of man's appearance on the globe cannot be determined, but that it must be very remote from the adopted historical human period is for many reasons all but certain."

"Geology may, perhaps, furnish us some data. Thus, the age of the coal formation is by some computed to lie between five and nine millions of years. This calculation by no means appears to be exag

gerated. Lyell, on the other hand, has calculated that the formation of the valley of the Niagara, which is much more recent than the diluvial deposits, required at least 35,000 years for its formation.

"Now, though it may be admitted that it has not as yet been proved that the age of man reaches much beyond the diluvial formation, there is still less reason to believe that he appeared later, inasmuch as no general change of the surface of the earth has since taken place, and as all the essential conditions for man's existence were then present. It seems, therefore, that we are justified to assume the age of man to be between the extreme limits of 35,000 and 9,000,000 years."

"It must be acknowledged, that the Professor, by thus soaring into infinite time far beyond our ken, takes rather the safe side of the question. At any rate, he seems merely to say that there is presumptive geological evidence that humanity is not younger than 35,000 years.

Primitive Inhabitants of the British Isles.-The ancient inhabitants of Britain seem to have been closely connected with those of Scandin

Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 1860.

avia. Dr. Wilde* thinks that there is sufficient evidence to believe that Ireland has at different and remote periods been inhabited by at least two if not three distinct races, the first of which was characterised by a short and the second by an elongated form of skull, corresponding in character and succession to the Aborigines of Scandinavia. Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his work,t is of opinion that the most ancient of the extinct pre-celtic races of Scotland were men with boat-shaped kumbe cephalic skulls, the second race of Nilsson. These lived in the stone period. The short-heads lived after them; both were destroyed or displaced by the Celts in the bronze period; and, in their turn, gave way to the Norwegians, who introduced iron. Intelligence of Primitive Races.-That the mere rudeness of workmanship in the implements left us by the antehistoric or aboriginal peoples, does not necessarily lead to the inference that they were physically and morally inferior to succeeding races, must be admitted, for it may be doubted, that supposing a number of the present intelligent audience were suddenly cast away upon some desert island, deprived of the least use of metal or of the means to procure it, whether they could, by mere percussion, and friction, manufacture objects either more perfect, or more adapted to the purpose intended than the rude implements of the antehistoric race. As, therefore, we cannot judge of them by their works, we must search for other indications of their supposed mental capacities.

It is generally admitted that the mental superiority of man depends on the development and structure of his brain, and that the manifestation of intellect and the capacity for improvement is closely connected with the cerebral structure. It is also mostly allowed that examination of the interior of the skull gives a fair index of the size and shape of the brain.

Hence, our chief anthropologists have adopted the particular shape of the cranium as the great mark of distinction between the different races of man.

Premature as the inference may be, still if we are to judge of the smallness of the skull, the development of the jaws, and other abnormities of the crania, found mingled with fossil-bones and flint implements, the conclusion is not altogether unfounded that the original races were inferior to the succeeding immigrants, and also that the primitive race is now extinct in Europe, and has shared the fate of the gigantic animals with which it was contemporaneous.

*Ethnology of the Ancient Irish.

+ Pre-Celtic Annals of Scotland.

107

ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE INFERIOR

ANIMALS.*

PROFESSOR HUXLEY has recently published a small volume of essays which seem destined to create no little sensation amongst the British public. Whatever, however, may be its present popularity, it is not a work like Darwin's Origin of Species, born to a somewhat enduring fame. Professor Huxley has lost a grand chance of now producing a book which would be for a quarter of a century connected with his name; but instead of writing a serious and painstaking work he has published three very incomplete essays. We are sorry for Professor Huxley's fame that he should have done this; because the time has, perhaps, now come when a great deal of the evidence on this subject could be brought together. However, the work is published, and we must now give our readers some account of its contents. The first chapter is on the natural history of the man-like apes, chiefly taken from Dr. Savage and Mr. Wallace. We then have a note, with a well-known woodcut from Pigafetta, respecting African cannibalism in the sixteenth century. We have only to observe that this is most unnecessarily introduced at this place. Then comes the second, and most important chapter in the book, on the relation of man to the lower animals.

We shall let Professor Huxley, as far as possible, speak for himself. He thus introduces this subject.

"The question of questions for mankind-the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other— is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. Whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the mere spirit of scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contem

* Man's Place in Nature, by T. H. Huxley, 1863.

poraries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling blocks, strike out into paths of their own. The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch.

"Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth-tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their

successors.

"In a well-worn metaphor, a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained, and of such there have been many.

"Since the revival of learning, whereby the Western races of Europe were enabled to enter upon that progress towards true knowledge, which was commenced by the philosophers of Greece, but was almost arrested in subsequent long ages of intellectual stagnation, or, at most, gyration, the human larva has been feeding vigorously, and moulting in proportion. A skin of some dimension was cast in the sixteenth century, and another towards the end of the eighteenth, while, within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent. But this is a process not unusually accompanied by many throes and some sickness and debility, or, it may be, by graver disturbances; so that every good citizen must feel bound to facilitate the process, and even if he have nothing but a scalpel to work withal, to ease the cracking integument to the best of his ability."

After touching on the development of the lower vertebrate animals, one turns with impatience to inquire what results are yielded by the study of the development of man. Is he something apart?"

Professor Huxley continues.

"It is quite certain that the Ape which most nearly approaches man, in the totality of its organization, is either the Chimpanzee or the Gorilla; and as it makes no practical difference, for the purposes of

my present argument, which is selected for comparison, on the one hand, with Man, and on the other hand, with the rest of the Primates, I shall select the latter (so far as its organization is known) — as a brute now so celebrated in prose and verse, that all must have heard of him, and have formed some conception of his appearance. I shall take up as many of the most important points of difference between man and this remarkable creature, as the space at my disposal will allow me to discuss, and the necessities of the argument demand; and I shall inquire into the value and magnitude of these differences, when placed side by side with those which separate the Gorilla from other animals of the same order.

"In the general proportions of the body and limbs there is a remarkable difference between the Gorilla and Man, which at once strikes the eye. The Gorilla's brain-case is smaller, its trunk larger, its lower limbs shorter, its upper limbs longer in proportion than those of Man.

"I find that the vertebral column of a full grown Gorilla, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, measures 27 inches along its anterior curvature, from the upper edge of the atlas, or first vertebra of the neck, to the lower extremity of the sacrum; that the arm, without the hand, is 311⁄2 inches long; that the leg, without the foot, is 26 inches long; that the hand is 9 inches long; the foot 11 inches long.

"In other words, taking the length of the spinal column as 100, the arm equals 115, the leg 96, the hand 36, and the foot 41.

"In the skeleton of a male Bosjesman, in the same collection, the proportions, by the same measurement, to the spinal column, taken as 100, are the arm 78, the leg 110, the hand 26, and the foot 32. In a woman of the same race the arm is 83, and the leg 120, the hand and foot remaining the same. In a European skeleton I find the arm to be 80, the leg 117, the hand 26, and the foot 35.

"Thus the leg is not so different as it looks as first sight, in its proportions to the spine in the Gorilla and in the Man-being very slightly shorter than the spine in the former, and between 1-10th and 1-5th longer than the spine in the latter. The foot is longer and the hand much longer in the Gorilla; but the great difference is caused by the arms, which are very much longer than the spine in the Gorilla, very much shorter than the spine in Man.

"The question now arises how are the other apes related to the Gorilla in these respects-taking the length of the spine, measured in the same way, at 100. In an adult Chimpanzee, the arm is only 96, the leg 90, the hand 43, the foot 39-so that the hand and the leg depart more from the human proportion and the arm less, while the foot is about the same as in the Gorilla.

"In the Orang, the arms are very much longer than in the Gorilla (122), while the legs are shorter (88); the foot is longer than the hand (52 and 48), and both are much longer in proportion to the spine.

"In the other man-like Apes again, the Gibbons, these proportions are still further altered; the length of the arms being to that of the spinal column as 19 to 11; while the legs are also a third longer than