THE STATURE OF MAN AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. 525 



various epochs of history as well as in prehistoric times and geologic 

 ages. For this it is necessary to arrive at some sure method of calcu- 

 lating the real size of the living being from his skeleton, or from 

 fragments of his skeleton, found in the deposits of the Tertiary or 

 Quaternary periods or in the sepulchers of historic times. The estab- 

 lishment of such a method of mensuration has for many years occu- 

 pied L. Manouvrier, and it constitutes one of his best titles to a scien- 

 tific reputation. The basic work that he published on the subject 

 appeared in 1892; and recently, in 1902, he crowned his efforts, as it 

 were, by issuing a study " upon anthropometric relations and the 

 principal proportions of the body " (sur les rapports anthropome- 

 triques et sur les princij^ales proportions du corps). The memoir is 

 of great interest to natural history in general. Parts of it are well 

 worthy the attention of artists, painters, and sculptors, whose clas- 

 sical canons, perhaps a bit factitious, ought to be submitted to the 

 control of the science of man as he really is. 



The results of the investigations made by L. Manouvrier can be 

 expressed in a word. They have proved that man's stature has not 

 undergone any important regular variation during the hundreds of 

 thousands of years that have rolled by since his first appearance upon 

 the globe. So far as one can judge from the isolated specimens 

 brought to liglit by excavations, the stature of man has undergone no 

 appreciable change. In this regard civilized man is the same as 

 primitive man. 



The study of animals has led to similar conclusions. In general, 

 the l)ody of animals of a certain species or of a certain variety is not 

 modified: or if it is modified, the change has causes by no means dis- 

 playing the character of a chronologic evolution. Geoifroy Saint- 

 Hilaire, in order to show that man's stature has not necessarily 

 changed since geologic times, based his argument upon precisely this 

 fact, that the body of a domesticated animal species is identical with 

 that of the wild species. 



IV. 



The furthest removed ancestor of man seems to be the famous 

 Pithecanthropus erectm. In the course of the years 1891 and 1892, 

 as may be remembered, a physician in the Dutch army, Eugene Du- 

 bois, discovered near Trinil, on the island of Java, some bones of puz- 

 zling appearance and with characteristics intermediate between those 

 of a man and those of an anthropoid ape. There, in a deposit un- 

 doubtedly of the Tertiary epoch, was a complete skull, a femur, and 

 two molars. 



Simple as were these remains, they nevertheless sufficed for assign- 

 ing to its proper place and rank in the animal hierarchy the being 

 from which they came. It belongs between the anthropoid ape, the 



