Seen and Lost. 383 
ing chin; to mect such a man face to face in 
Piccadilly would frighten a nervous person of the 
present time. But his teeth were not unlike our 
own, only very much larger and more powerful, 
and well adapted to their work of masticating the 
flesh, underdone and possibly raw, of mammoth and 
rhinoceros. If, then, this living man recalls a type 
of the past, it is of a remoter past, a more primitive 
man, the volume of whose history is missing from 
the geological record. To speculate on such a 
subject seems idle and useless; and when I coveted 
possession of that head it was not because I thought 
that it might lead to any fresh discovery. A lower 
motive inspired the feeling. I wished for it only 
that I might bring it over the sea, to drop it like a 
new apple of discord, suited to the spirit of the 
times, among the anthropologists and evolutionists 
generally of this old and learned world. Inscribed, 
of course, “To the most learned,” but giving no 
locality and no particulars. I wished to do that for 
the pleasure—not a very noble kind of pleasure, I 
allow—of witnessing from some safe hiding-place 
the stupendous strife that would have ensued—a 
battle more furious, lasting and fatal to many a 
brave knight of biology, than was ever yet fought, 
over any bone or bony fragment or fabric ever 
picked up, including the celebrated cranium of the 
Neanderthal. 
