vi THE ARYAN QUESTION. 328 



ture of the man of Spy, he possessed a greater number of 

 pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind.* 



And after enumerating these lie continues: 



The other and much more numerous characters of the 

 skull, of the trunk, and of the limbs seem to be all human. 

 Between the man of Spy and an existing anthropoid ape 

 there lies an abyss. 



Now that is pleasant reading for me, because, 

 in 1863, I committed myself to the assertion that 

 the Neanderthal skull was " the most pithecoid of 

 human crania yet discovered," yet that " in no 

 sense can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as 

 the remains of a human being intermediate be- 

 tween men and apes " f and " that the fossil re- 

 mains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to 

 me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower 

 pithecoid form, by the modification of which he 

 has, probably, become what he is." J 



As the evidence stood seven and twenty years 

 ago, in fact, it would have been imprudent to as- 

 sume that the Neanderthal skull was anything but 

 a case of sporadic reversion. But, in my anxiety 

 not to overstate my case, I understated it. The 

 Neanderthaloid race is " appreciably nearer," 

 though the approximation is but slight. In the 

 words of M. Fraipont: 



* Fraipont et Lohest. " La Race humaine de Neander- 

 thal, ou de Canstatt, en Belgique," Archives de Biologie, 

 1886. 



t See p. 204 supra. % Ibid, p. 208. 



