634 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1882, 



I. — ANTHROPOGENY. 



As previously defined in these summaries, antliropogeny includes all 

 investigations concerning the time, place, causes, and manner of man's 

 appearance, together with his physical, intellectual, technical, social, 

 moral, and religious status at his advent. 



Says M. Issaurat, in reviewing Hovelacque's "Les Debuts de I'Hu- 

 manite," primitive man has left traces of his existence that give us 

 some idea of his structure, his industry, and his manners. Further- 

 more, we meet now living on the globe the witnesses of prehistoric 

 races in the lower types of men. The comparison of the characteristics 

 of these lower types leads to interesting conclusions. It confirms, ac- 

 cording to M. Hovelacque, the polygenism of Broca and Topinard, to 

 wit, that the distinguishing features of certain races have values such 

 as are made the bases of species in natural history. There were, there- 

 fore, many species of anthropoid precursors of man. M. Hovelacque 

 also draws from modern savages some conclusions concerning the intel- 

 lectual, social, and moral status of primitive man. [Rev. d'Anthrop.^ 

 XV, p. 521.) 



Mr. Grant Allen, criticising the arguments of Dr. Mitchell and Mr. 

 Dawkins respecting the bearing of archaeological facts upon the evolu- 

 tion of man, thus formulates his conclusions: 1. The cave-men were 

 not only true men, but men of a comparatively high type. 2. But the 

 river-drift men, who preceded them, were men of a lower social organi- 

 zation, and i^robably of a lower physical organization as well. 3. The 

 earliest human remains which we possess, though on the whole decidedly 

 human, are yet in some respects of a type more brute-like than that of 

 any existing sav'ages. 4. They specially recall the most striking traits 

 of the larger anthropoid apes. 5. There is no reason to suppose that 

 these remains are those of the earliest men who inhabited the earth. 6. 

 There is good reason for believing that before the evolution of man in 

 his i^resent specific type, a man-like animal, belonging to the same 

 genus, but less highly differentiated, lived in Europe. 7. From this 

 man-like animal the existing human species is descended. 8. Analogy 

 would lead us to suppose that the line of descent which culminates in 

 man first diverged from the line of descent which culminates in the 

 gorilla and the chimpanzee about the later Eocene or early Miocene, 

 period. The fallacy which underlies so much of our current reasoning 

 on primitive man is the tacit assumjition that man is a single modern 

 species, not a Tertiary genus with only one species surviving. The 

 more we examine the structure of man and of the anthropoid apes, the 

 more does it become clear that the differences between them are merely 

 those of a genus or family, rather than distinctive of a separate order, 

 or even a separate sub order. It is pretty generally- acknowledged that 

 the divergence between man and the anthroi)oids is greater than can 



