[hill-tout] PHYLOGENY OF MAN 77 



Neither school, strange to say, as far as I have seen seems to 

 have thought it worth while to approach the question from the point 

 of view of the illuminating biogenetic law of von Baer and Agassiz, 

 or else each has entirely overlooked this source of evidence. The 

 support which the views held by the British anatomical authorities 

 receive when the light of this law is turned upon the question is so 

 considerable and conclusive that the student of open mind need no 

 longer be in doubt as to which view is the more correct one. 



If man and the anthropoids had a common progenitor, as no 

 one now doubts, the type and the general characters of that pro- 

 genitor must be sought in the relatively undifferentiated young of the 

 anthropoids as we find them to-day. Apart from direct palaeonto- 

 logical evidence there is no other source to which we can now go to 

 obtain information on this head. But if the biogeneti(5 law we invoked 

 in this paper to explain the cranial characters of Homo neander- 

 thalensis is valid, and there can be no doubt on that point, then the 

 characters exhibited by the young anthropoids will most closely 

 represent those of Homosimius precursor. All we know of the fossil 

 forms of the whole sub-order of the Anthropoidea confirms this. 

 They are chinless animals and generally had well developed canines, 

 but they had, as did also Homosimius precursor, that well developed 

 and human-like type of head which characterizes almost all the young 

 of the present-day monkeys and apes. Considering the origin of 

 man and his close affiliation to the anthropoids could the Dawn- 

 men have had much other facial and cranial characters than those 

 seen in Eoanthropus? 



Instead of being embarrassed by the mixed characters we find 

 in Eoanthropus, we ought really to have expected them and have 

 felt embarrassed if they had been missing. The Dawn-men, if truly 

 such, must, from their simian affinities, exhibit just such characters 

 in head, face and teeth as those seen in Eoanthropus dawsoni. No 

 doubt exists in our minds as to the humanity of the Mauer jaw, or 

 of the other primitive mandibles, because of their undeveloped 

 chins. Chinlessness is clearly a characteristic of the primitive types 

 of man almost as much as of the anthropoids themselves; and as to 

 the pronounced canines in Eoanthropus the dentition of modern 

 man supplies us with too much evidence of an abnormal development 

 of these particular teeth in man's past to cause any trouble on this 

 point. Any dentist of experience will tell one that cases of abnormal 

 development of the human canines is far from infrequent. The 

 writer numbers among his acquaintances two individuals whose 

 canine teeth are abnormally developed and are much longer and 



