76 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and as helping to determine the genus or species to which it rightly 

 belongs. 



Eight features have been put forward by the "humanist" school 

 as diagnostic of the humanity of the mandible. Millar's rebuttal 

 of these is a good example of the character of the discussions and 

 clearly shows how indeterminate are the features upon which we 

 have to base our judgment. He asserts that not one of the eight 

 is a truly diagnostic "human" character; that while it is true that 

 six of the eight features resemble those found in some human jaws 

 it is equally true that exactly the same features occur in jaws of the 

 anthropoids. Indeed, it would appear from the discussion on the 

 teeth that there are no dental peculiarities of sufficient diagnostic 

 value to determine whether a given tooth belongs to the Hominidae 

 or to the Panidae, that is, to a human jaw or to a chimpanzee's; and 

 when the mandible itself is considered we find that the decided 

 human-like characters of the posterior half are about equally balanced 

 by the strong simian-like characters of the anterior. If we take 

 Millar's position in a case like this and wholly disregard the fact 

 that this mandible of mixed human and simian characters was closely 

 associated with a skull admittedly human, the argument is left in 

 the air and we deprive ourselves of valuable corroborative evidence 

 to assist us in determining whether the mandible shall be regarded as 

 simian or human. But if we take the fact of the association into 

 account, as I submit we ought, it gives just that additional evidence 

 we need to form a judgment on the matter; and this evidence, taken 

 in conjunction with the light thrown upon the whole question by 

 von Baer's law, assures us that in the Piltdown remains we are dealing 

 with a single new genus and not with two or possibly three; and thus 

 all 'the evidence and all the probabilities confirm us in this judgment. 

 For it is wholly improbable, nay, almost impossible, as Smith Wood- 

 ward has pointed out, that when we find a unique Primate skull in 

 the same geological bed as an absolutely new Pri mate jaw and in 

 close proximity to a new Primate tooth, we are dealing with the 

 remains of three distinct animals rather than with a single new genus. 



One good result, however, has followed from these discussions. 

 We know to-day what we did not clearly know before, that many 

 of the characters we thought were exclusively simian or exclusively 

 human are really neither one nor the other, but equally common to 

 both ; and further that we may easily be misled in discussions of this 

 kind if we attempt to generalise too broadly from limited data and 

 insufficient knowledge. 



