THE PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 375 



resembling simian animals, are produced by atavism, has been 

 wholly abandoned since students have reached the conviction that 

 the skulls of microcephals have indexes of pathological formation, 

 with deficiencies arising from degeneracy. 



The human organism, especially in the embryonic stage, is 

 distinguished by many features that have been borrowed, not 

 from the monkey only, but also from other animals. The living 

 elements, the cells, present us the same types in man as in the 

 mammals ; sometimes these resemblances in the embryo continue 

 to exist, and are even developed after birth. But this persistence 

 or hyperplasy can not be made to serve as proof of the animal 

 origin of man. Let us take this example of a hyperplasy of this 

 kind : there is in the higher anthropoid apes a bony ramifica- 

 tion that connects the jugular of the temporal with the frontal 

 bone. It is sometimes developed in man, and is wanting in some 

 individuals among the higher monkeys. I have shown, and M. 

 Anoutchine has confirmed it, that this ramification occurs very 

 frequently in the Australians, and we both regard the peculiarity 

 as of simian origin. But we can not conclude from that that the 

 Australians are simian-like, for the same peculiarity has been re- 

 marked, in some infrequent cases, in the skulls of Europeans ; 

 while there is not an example of men having such heads having 

 furnished any other indication of simian organization or develop- 

 ment. The bony ramification of the temporal jugular is nothing 

 else than a special peculiarity, sometimes individual, sometimes 

 racial, like curly hair, for example. When we look at a negro's 

 head we might say that it resembles a sheep or a poodle ; but, so 

 far as we know, nobody has yet expressed the opinion that negroes 

 are descended from sheep or from dogs. Still, the negroes are 

 like sheep and poodle dogs in the hereditary transmission of a 

 special peculiarity in their hair. In spite of that, their heads in 

 no way resemble those of the animals we have mentioned. Bear- 

 ing in mind these observations, we have become more circum- 

 spect now in our reasonings upon individual or racial analogies 

 between man and animals ; we certainly shall not forget that the 

 human organization is in its essentials an animal organism, and 

 that the monstrosities which occasionally appear may be regarded 

 as results of atavism ; but we shall require more convincing argu- 

 ments before we assume a near relationship of man with any 

 definite animal. 



It was generally believed a few years ago that there yet existed 

 a few human races which still remained in the primitive inferior 

 condition of their organization. But all these races have been ob- 

 jects of minute investigation, and we know that they have an organ- 

 ization like ours, often indeed superior to that of supposed higher 

 races ; thus, the Eskimo head and the head of the Tierra del Fue- 



