HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 33 



victions. Thus, when McCann ridicules Wells and accuses him 

 of pure romancing, because the latter speaks of certain hairy 

 "wild women" of the Caves, he himself seems to be ignorant 

 of the fact that a palaeolithic etching has been found repre- 

 senting a woman so covered with hair that she had no need of 

 other apparel (the bas-relief from Laugerie-Basse carved on 

 reindeer palm — cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 540 and 

 Plate 2). 



Mr. McCann may object, with truth, that this is far from 

 being a proof that the primitive representatives of the human 

 race were hairy individuals, but the fact suffices, at least, to 

 acquit Mr. Wells of the charge of unscrupulous invention. 

 Hence, while we have no wish to excuse the lamentable lack 

 of scientific conscientiousness so manifestly apparent in the 

 writings of popularizers of evolution, like Wells, Osborn, and 

 Haeckel, nevertheless common justice, not to speak of charity, 

 constrains us to presume that, occasionally at least, their de- 

 partures from the norm of objective fact were due to ordinary 

 human fallibility or to the mental blindness induced by pre- 

 conceptions, rather than to any deliberate intent to deceive. 

 And we feel ourselves impelled to make this allowance for 

 unconscious inaccuracy all the more readily that we are con- 

 fronted with the necessity of extending the selfsame indulgence 

 to Mr. McCann himself. Thus we find that the seventh illus- 

 tration in ''God — or Gorilla" (opposite p. 56) bears the legend: 

 "Skeletons of man and chimpanzee compared," when, in point 

 of fact, the ape skeleton in question is not that of a chimpanzee 

 {Troglodytes niger) at all, but of an Orang-utan {Simla 

 satyms), as the reader may verify for himself by consulting 

 Plate VI of the English version of Wasmann's "Modern 

 Biology," where the identical illustration appears above its 

 proper title: "Skeleton of an adult Orang-utan." Since the 

 error is repeated in the index of illustrations and in the legend 

 of the third illustration of the appendix, it is impossible, in 

 this instance, to shift the responsibility from Mr. McCann to 

 the printer. In any case, it is sincerely to be hoped that this. 



