90 COMPARISON OF THE CHAP. v. 



Professor Huxley's observation regarding the wide range of 

 variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so 

 pure a race as the native Australian, removes to no small 

 extent this supposed anomaly, assuming what though not 

 proved is very probable, that both varieties coexisted in the 

 post-pliocene period in Western Europe. 



As to the Engis skull, we must remember that although 

 associated with the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and 

 hyaena, all of extinct species, it nevertheless is also accom 

 panied by a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other 

 quadrupeds of species still living. Indeed many eminent 

 palaeontologists, and among them Professor Pictet, think that, 

 numerically considered, the larger portion of the mammalian 

 fauna agrees specifically with that of our own period, so that 

 we are scarcely entitled to feel surprised if we find human 

 races of the post-pliocene epoch undistinguishable from some 

 living ones. It would merely tend to show that man has 

 been as constant in his osteological characters as many other 

 mammalia now his contemporaries. The expectation of 

 always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older 

 the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of 

 progressive development, and it may prove to be sound ; 

 nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no dis 

 tinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are 

 called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in 

 chronological order that of the higher races. 



It is now admitted that the differences between the brain 

 of the highest races of man and that of the lowest, though 

 less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate 

 the human from the simian brain;* and the same rule 

 holds good in regard to the shape of the skull. The average 

 Negro skull differs from that of the European in having a 



* Natural History Keview, 1861, p. 8. 



