392 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



New York. For this has a facial angle of no more than 85 °, 

 which harmonises completely with the alveolar index of 105. 

 In the British Museum are several skulls with facial angles 

 ranging from 88° to 90 , and an alveolar index of as much 

 as 1 10. Nor does it follow that because the toothrow in the 

 Piltdown jaw was straight, as in chimpanzees, therefore the 

 rami must have run parallel with the sagittal plane. The 

 relation to this plane is determined, not b}^ the toothrow, 

 but by the intercondylar width. In megadont examples of 

 modern man a straight toothrow frequently occurs, as I shall 

 show later. His contention that the nasals, which he agrees 

 to accord to the Piltdown skull, cannot possibly be associated 

 with this jaw, is, like the rest of his argument, but a crude 

 deduction founded on false premises. So much for his sum- 

 mary. Now for his details. 



I will begin with the cranium. As to the human character 

 of this there can be no two opinions. Mr. Miller himself is 

 very emphatic on this point, building thereon much of his 

 case against the human character of the jaw. He has missed, 

 however, some of its most interesting features owing to his 

 obsession in regard to the mandible. In the squamosal or 

 " temporal," for example, the bone which he has designated 

 as the type of Eoanthropus, he has failed to appreciate the fact 

 that it is remarkable as much for its negative, as for its positive, 

 characters. Having regard to its undoubted age one would 

 have expected to find the simian spur on its anterior border 

 which articulates, in all the apes, and in monkeys, and in many 

 of the lower human races, with the frontal. We should also 

 have expected to find a shallow glenoid cavity, as in the anthro- 

 poid apes, and many of the lower human types. Instead, this 

 fossa is of most unusual depth, so much so that I have found 

 but few modern skulls displaying a like depth. The eminentia 

 articularis, on the other hand, is not only very extensive, but 

 unusually oblique, which again is a peculiar character. In 

 the form of the petrous portion it is most emphatically human, 

 but here again it is peculiar, since it exceeds in length that 

 of modern skulls by no less than 10 mm., giving a total 

 breadth to the skull of no less than 20 mm. in excess of modern 

 skulls. That Mr. Miller has entirely missed this feature is 

 shown by a footnote (p. 1 7 of his memoir) in which he remarks 

 that " ... it is perhaps not safe to assume that the distance 



