VERTEBEATA. 261 



The characters peculiar to man are numerous, but mostly 

 adaptive. Such are the tenuity of the derm or skin ; the rudi- 

 mentary hairs, except on particular parts; the comparatively 

 email face, even in the lowest savages, compared to the large size 

 of the skull ; and the even teeth without a break in the series. 

 He is the only " plantigrade biped " known, and the only animal 

 whose chief locomotive power is thrown on the innermost side 

 of the foot. 



That man was contemporary with the mammoth, the woolly 

 rhinoceros, and the cave-bear can now admit of no doubt. His 

 bones, preserved from decay by the constant dripping of water 

 charged with carbonate of lime, have been found in many cal- 

 careous caverns in company with those of these and other extinct 

 animals. The Engis cavern, near Liege, has yielded a skull 

 which, being restored, is one of the most perfect that has yet been 

 found ; another, from the Neanderthal, is said to be the " most 

 brutal of all known skulls." Yet these skulls do not differ essen- 

 tially from one another or from modern types more than those 

 of now existing races differ from each other. The Neanderthal 

 skull stands, indeed, " in capacity very nearly on a level with the 

 mean of the two human extremes, and very far above the pithe- 

 coid maximum " (Huxley). 



Whatever may be said as to the unity of the species, or of 

 the "endless diversity of opinion" that exists as to races, it is 

 admitted that there is only one genus Homo. Linnaeus, in his 

 ' Fauna Suecica' (1761), puts it at the head of his order " Mag- 

 nates " [afterwards changed to Primates], under the specific name 

 of " HOMO sapiens" with the character " Naturae regnorum 

 Tyrannus." 



