III. 



ON SOME FOSSIL KEMAINS OF MAN. 



I hate endeavoured to show in the preceding Essay, 

 that the Anthropent, or Man Family, form a very well 

 defined, group of the Primates, between which and the 

 immediately following Family, the Catarhini, there is, in 

 the existing world, the same entire absence of any transi- 

 tional form or connecting link, as between the Catarhini 

 and Platyrhint. 



It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the 

 structural intervals between the various existing modifica- 

 tions of organic beings may be diminished, or even obliter- 

 ated, if we take into account the long and varied succes- 

 sion of animals and plants which have preceded those now 

 living and which are known to us only by their fossilized 

 remains. How far this doctrine is well based, how far, on 

 the other hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it is 

 an overstatement of the real facts of the case, and an ex- 

 aggeration of the conclusions fairly deducible from them, 

 are points of grave importance, but into the discussion of 

 which I do not, at present, propose to enter. It is enough 

 that such a view of the relations of extinct to living 

 beings has been propounded, to lead us to inquire, with 

 anxiety, how far the recent discoveries of human remains 

 in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view. 



