690 THE LAST STEPS IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 



ill remote times a multitude of animals with fius called the pinnipeds. 

 By a retrogression the latter have seen their limbs atrophy, come close 

 to the body in the form of a paddle, and play the part of fius. But the 

 most probable is generally the simplest. This bend iu the road that 

 would have deiermiued the evolution of man, or rather of one of his 

 precursors, is useless. It seems more ratioual to conceive of the per- 

 fect biped and biman type descending from a type that we have seen 

 already sketched in the Eocene times and constituting the fuudameutal 

 origiual type of the mammals. It would have been necessary then to 

 consider the branch of the monkeys as a collateral branch iu which evo- 

 lution would uot have surpassed that which the present and fossil an- 

 thropoids show us. 



This hypothesis would resolve certain difficulties which seem unsur- 

 mountable in anthropology. The most inferior human races known to 

 us are so near to the superior races in contrast to the distance which 

 separntes them from the monkeys, that we can consider the different 

 men as forming an entirely relatively homogeneous, uniform species as 

 M. de Quatrefages maintains. The most ancient human race, that of 

 Neanderthal, is in the same position, whatever they say of it. His cra- 

 nial capacity, that is to say, that feature which really characterizes man, 

 is indeed considerable and higher than the most inferior of the present 

 human races, such as the Australians. Between the lowest mean of the 

 capacity of the skull of the human races, which I fix at 1100 cubic centi- 

 meters in round numbers, and the mean of the highest anthropoid spe- 

 cies, which I put at 530 cubic centimeters,* the distance is prodigious 



* From all tlie absolute weights known of the brain, and from all the crauial capaci- 

 ties utilizable iu the scries of the vertebrates, iu dwelliug on the two limits of the 

 series, I have made out for the latter two scheiuatic tables showiug the differeuces that 

 are presented; first, the geueral means of man and the anthropoids (Gibbous left 

 out); second, their particular means, the lowest iu the human races, the highest 

 aniong the anthropoids; third, the extreme individual cases, the weakest normal iu 

 num, the strongest in the anthropoids. Combining these two tables, that is to say, 

 associating the products furnished by the weight with that furnished by the capacity. 

 1 then drew up a third schematic table which gives mo an intermediate value, that I 

 have designated under the name oi cerebral rohime. 



Here are the results : 



(1) The distance betweeu the general uu^au of hunuinity and the general mean of 

 the anthropoids (Gibbon always excepted) is 70 to 100 of the first of these means ; or 

 the mean normal brain of uuin is two and one-half times larger than the mean brain 

 of the anthropoids. 



(2) The distance from man to the anthropoid iu the general means being taken as 

 100, the distance between the particular means, the lowest observed in the human 

 races and highest found in the three genera of anthropoids is 48, and the distance be- 

 tween the extreme individual cases the closest on the oue side and the other is 26. 



It is evident that gradually as new material is gathered these figures may vary and 

 that being an intermediate value between two difiereut data, the one expressed in 

 grannncs and the other in tubic centimeters hence they have not an absolute value. 

 But such as they are they permit us to associate the data wliich, separate are frequently 

 iusufiicient, and throw clearly into relief that gulf that at the present tinie 8epa^^te8 

 mau and lh« anthropoids (Orang, Chimpanzee, and Gorrilla). 



