170 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



of these has been practically stationary since the time of Piltdown 

 man, who thus must have been the ancestral type for the higher races 

 of mankind, as previously mentioned in Section II, for it has just 

 been shown that many races of modern man still exist, where all 

 these cranial measurements are without exception found to compare 

 unfavourably (in the frontal segment particularly) with the stage of 

 evolutionary progress attained by him. 



Some interesting facts can be elicited by making a comparative 

 study of the Cro-magnon and Piltdown crania. In the first place the 

 Cro-magnon skull belonged to a very tall man, while the Piltdown 

 specimen is believed to have been that of a female. Therefore the 

 various cranial curvatures and chords and the bregmatic angle are a 

 little larger in the former, as would be expected. Nevertheless the 

 slope of the frontal region corresponds very closely in the two in- 

 stances, and that is a point of very far reaching importance. Indeed 

 it would be easy to convince oneself that the two outlines as shown 

 in Fig. 6 might perhaps have belonged to the same race, for they would 

 be within the range of cranial variation. Now it is fortunate that 

 the facial portion of the Cro-magnon skull and the mandible were so 

 well preserved, for they exhibit a markedly orthognathous modern 

 type, as was to be expected in a specimen showing such a highly 

 evolved frontal cranial arc. It is therefore obvious that this fact 

 still further increases our difficulty in accepting the view that the 

 Piltdown jaw belongs to the Piltdown cranium. 



IV. The Evolution of the Jaws and the Facial Portion 



OF the Skull 



The dental index takes cognisance only of the space occupied by 

 the molar and premolar teeth in the alveolar arch. It should be noted 

 however, that as recent researches have shown, the area allotted to the 

 incisors and canines is of the greatest morphological and evolutionary 

 importance. Smith Woodward^ has fully impressed us with this fact 

 in the case of the fragmentary Piltdown jaw, for he points out very 

 significantly that the relatively large space apparently allocated to 

 the canines and incisors in that specimen was probably associated 

 with an unusually large canine tooth, which as a consequence would 

 partake of the characters of that of an ape, and thus project above the 

 level of its fellows in the dental arch. This hypothesis was confirmed 

 by the discovery a short time afterwards^ of an ape-like canine tooth 

 in the gravel near where the jaw was discovered. It is quite evident 



1 op. cit. 



^ Quart. Jour. Geolog. Soc, London, 1914. 



