x\uGUST 19, 1920] 



NATURE 



769 



framing a pedigree, to the parts of one system, 

 more particularly to a single element of one 

 system, as Prof. Pearson has done, there is a 

 great risk of obtaining a purely artificial scheme 

 of ari*angement. If we use the thigh-bone alone, 

 our classification of the Primates will serve to 

 show only the evolution of their locomotory 

 systems. 



We are not forgetful that the discovery of a 

 single fossil thigh-bone may be the sole basis on 

 which we have to reconstruct an extinct form of 

 man m- ape. In such an event this memoir would 

 be invaluable, for it gives us, for the first time, 

 the basis on which a rational prophecy can be 

 framed. There is a case in point which is very 

 elaborately dealt with by Prof. Pearson — the thigh- 

 bone of Pithecanthropus. He has applied more 

 accurate and more elaborate tests to the anato- 

 mical characters of this bone than has hitherto 

 been the case, and comes to the conclusion, as the 

 majority of anatomists have already done, that 

 in no essential point does it differ from that of 

 modern man. And yet the skull assigned to this 

 primitive humanoid form is almost as much that 

 of an ape as of a man. Prof. Pearson is too 

 cautious a man of science to deny the possibility 

 of a being having at the same time an almost 

 perfect human femur and a skull and brain which 

 are non-human, but he is clearly more than 

 sceptical, for in his scheme of classification Pithec- 

 anthropus must be given a place amongst races 

 of modern man. Even when he has given us, as 

 he has promised — and it is sincerely to be hoped 

 he will be able to carry it out — his programme of 

 research — the correlationship of the thigh-bone to 

 all the other bones of the body and their correla- 

 tionships to the jaws and cranium — there will still 

 remain the infinitely more difficult task of stating 

 in mathematical terms the correlationship of one 

 system to another, such as that of the nervous to 

 the digestive system, or of the respiratory to the 

 reproductive, circulatory, and other systems. For 

 some time, it is clear, we must depend, as in the 

 past, on the somewhat crude methods of 

 anatomical appreciation and analysis. 



We have already told how the principal author 

 of this monograph was led, during the latter part 

 of the twelve years he devoted to a study of the 

 femur, to ascertain what light his results shed on 

 the evolutionary histories of mankind, the anthro- 

 poid apes, monkeys, and lemurs. It is true that 

 his method of comparison sometimes leads him to 

 quite surprising situations — of the humour of 

 which he is perfectly aware — as when man and the 

 pig find themselves the closest of allies as regards 

 the diameters of their femoral shafts, or when the 

 Old World monkeys find themselves cheek by jowl 

 NO, 2651, VOL. 105] 



with man because of the equality of length in 

 their femoral condyles. But on the whole his 

 results and deductions must be regarded as 

 helpful and trustworthy. It so happens that 

 the writer of this review has, these thirty years 

 past, been collecting data from all the systems of 

 the Primate body (see Nature, 191 i, vol, Ixxxv., 

 p. 508), and has from time to time assorted his 

 observations to see how far a scheme of Primate 

 evolution could be framed which would give a 

 coherent explanation of the distribution of anato- 

 mical characters such as is now seen in the bodies 

 of man, the anthropoid apes, and the monkeys 

 of the Old and New Worlds. The results 

 which have been reached by Prof. Pearson and 

 the reviewer are, in the main, in harmony. The 

 mathematical anatomist insists upon an anthropoid 

 or troglodytic link in man's lineage; he 

 claims to have reinstated the great anthropoid 

 or troglodyte as a necessary stage in man's 

 ancestry ; but he will find that very few 

 anatomists who have given this problem due 

 thought have dismissed the anthropoid apes from 

 the place given to them by Huxley. Prof. Pearson 

 gives Tarsius a remote place in his scheme of 

 human evolution. He is right, too, in dismissing 

 the present-day gibbon from man's family tree, 

 but altogether wrong if he supposes that the 

 hylobatian stock from which the modern gibbon 

 (highly specialised so far as limbs are concerned) 

 arose plays no part in man's lineage. He is 

 right, too, in concluding that the gibbon has no 

 claim to be brigaded with the great anthropoids 

 —the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang. In their 

 essential structure the gibbons form a separate 

 group, one which serves to link together — or at 

 least to bridge the gaps between — the monkeys 

 of the Old and New Worlds and the great anthro- 

 poids. They are the essential link between 

 monkeys and anthropoids. The femoral characters 

 of the gibbon give a somewhat misleading indi- 

 cation of its true place in the phylum of the 

 higher Primates. 



As a common ancestor of the human and great 

 anthropoid group — the pre-troglodytc in man's 

 lineage — Prof. Pearson postulates a " Protsimio- 

 human " Primate form, which he believes will turn 

 out to be more human than anthropoid, a mathe- 

 matical deduction with which few naturalists will 

 agree. On the other hand, certain inferences 

 made regarding the status and relationship of 

 early races of man in Europe, founded entirely on 

 the characters of their thigh-bones, are particu- 

 larly worthy of attention. There has been much 

 speculation regarding the existence of negroids in 

 southern Europe in late Pleistocene times, founded 

 on the discovery of remains of two Grimaldi indi- 



