352 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



has set the matter at rest by confirming the deductions of 

 Schaaffhausen, Huxley and Broca as to the nature and 

 antiquity of the Neanderthal skull and race. I am con- 

 vinced that the promulgation of so many and so various 

 theories has been largely due to an under-estimation of the 

 variation in structure amongst individual men and anthro- 

 poids, and to an exaggeration of the structural interval that 

 separates these two groups of primates. 



3. AN ENUMERATION OF THE PRINCIPAL FINDS OF 



FOSSIL MAN. 



The south-eastern provinces of Belgium have proved so 

 far to be the chief graveyard of Quaternary man, the finds 

 made in France, Italy, Germany and England 1 being merely 

 corroboratory items. These provinces offered suitable con- 

 ditions for the preservation of remains. Through this part 

 of Belgium run the Meuse and its many tributaries, fre- 

 quently confined between bluffs of Devonian limestone. 

 On the faces of these bluffs, fifteen to thirty metres above 

 the present stream-levels, open caves which were frequented 

 by man, the cave bear, the cave hyaena, the mammoth, the 

 woolly rhinoceros and other members of the fauna of 

 Western Europe during Quaternary times. Any bones 

 left on the floor of the cave tended, in the course of time, 

 to become buried by the constant stalagmitic droppings, 

 the surface soil washed in through vents in the roof, and 

 now and again by the addition of fragments of limestone 

 detached from the vault. Disintegration of the surface of 



this work I beg to acknowledge my indebtedness. A masterly description 

 of the Spy remains is given, along with a clear and brief account of 

 former similar discoveries. 



1 Professor Howes has drawn my attention to the most recent and 

 evidently most important find of this nature yet made in England. (" On 

 a Human Skull and Limb-Bones found in the Palaeolithic Terrace-Gravels 

 at Galley Hill, Kent," by E. T. Newton, F.R.S., Proc. Geo. Soc. Loud., 

 May 22, 1895.) The find, as such finds go, is very complete. The brain- 

 chamber of the skull evidently differs considerably from that of the Spy 

 crania, but, on the other hand, its teeth and facial parts closely agree. 

 Mr. Newton intends to publish a more detailed account of these remains. 



