458 



NATURE 



[March 17, 1892 



of proportion of the several parts of the body to be made 

 out, and compared in different races to that which obtains 

 in Europeans, rather than attempt to do work which re- 

 quires previous anatomical knowledge. The measure- 

 ments are divided into two classes, according to their 

 importance, but all of them are such as any intelligent 

 traveller, with a little practice, should be able to make 

 with accuracy. 



Chapters x. and xi. are devoted to the study of the 

 skull and the head of the living subject. A list of the 

 chief measurements of the skull which the author re- 

 commends is given. These are to our mind much more 

 satisfactory than any previous list he has produced, and 

 will, we feel certain, be hailed with pleasure by anthropo- 

 logists in this country, as being quite in accord with 

 their ideas of what the essential measurements of the 

 skull are. This list also agrees more nearly with the 

 measurements used by our fellow-workers in Germany 

 and Austria ; indeed, we might even go so far as to say 

 that when an international system of measuring the skull 

 s arrived at (a time which we hope is not far distant), the 

 difference between it and that now propounded by Dr. 

 Topinard will be slight. The most important measure- 

 ments of the Irving head, he considers, are those of the 

 nose, and next to them the diameters of the head. As 

 an example of what may be learned from a single cranio- 

 metric character when systematically studied, the cephalic 

 index is selected, and he alludes with satisfaction to the 

 international agreement recently arrived at regarding the 

 measurements from which it is obtained and its divisions, 

 and shows that it is a character of the first importance 

 for distinguishing types of races. 



Having thus prepared the way, he next discusses the 

 connection between man and the animals which approach 

 nearest to him, the. distance which separates them, and 

 the relative place which man occupies amongst them. 

 This naturally leads him to the consideration of the 

 characters and descriptive morphology of the Primates. 

 As the subject is a very wide one, he has restricted his 

 investigation to a comparative study of the brain and the 

 skeleton. Chapters xiii. and xiv. are occupied with the 

 evolution of the brain in the vertebrate series, the form and 

 volume of that organ, and the arrangement of its convolu- 

 tions. The mechanism of the evolutionary transformation 

 of the cranium of the animal into that of man is traced 

 in the fifteenth chapter, and the craniometric characters 

 connected with this transformation are dealt with in the 

 succeeding chapter. The characters of the head, the 

 vertebral column, the thorax and pelvis connected with 

 the quadrupedal and bipedal attitude, are discussed in 

 the seventeenth chapter, and those relating to the 

 attitude of the body and the function of prehension in 

 the eighteenth. 



The nineteenth chapter is devoted to the zoometric 

 characters related to the adaptations of the limbs for pre- 

 hension and locomotion ; the muscular and visceral 

 characters connected with attitude are also discussed 

 shortly. Other characters distinctive of man, the anthro- 

 poids, and the monkeys, in the vertebrcC, the sacrum, 

 mandible, teeth, liver, &c., are pointed out in the twentieth 

 chapter. Retrogressive anomalies, or the accidental 

 appearance in man and other animals of morphological 

 arrangements foreign to the type, but resembling those 

 NO. I 168, VOL. 45] 



which occur normally in some other type of animal ; 

 rudimentary organs, absolutely useless to man, but which 

 are more or less developed in other animals ; and pro- 

 gressive anomalies, are the subject of the twenty-first 

 chapter. 



The author concludes his task by devoting the last 

 chapter to a rhume of the previous chapters. He classifies 

 the Primates as follows : — 



1st Suborder — Man. 



/■ 1st family, Anthropoids. 

 2nd Sub-order-The Monkeys] ^l'^ "^ CeS'"' 



1.4th ,, Arctopithecida;. 

 3rd Sub-order — The Lemurs. 



Supposing the distance between the Cebida; and the Pithe- 

 cidaetobe i, that between the latterand the Anthropoids 

 would also be i, while the distance between the Anthro- 

 poids alone, or in conjunction with the other two 

 families, on the one hand, and man on the other, would 

 be represented by 3 ; the same figure would also repre- 

 sent the distance of the lemurs from the monkeys. We 

 j note that Dr. Topinard includes Galeopithecus among 

 I the lemurs, although this genus is now accepted by 

 zoologists as belonging to the Insectivora, but this slight 

 I error is immaterial. 



The important subject of the, relationship and descent 

 of man is dealt with more briefly than we could have 

 wished. He shows that man cannot be descended 

 from an Anthropoid, which is essentially a perfected 

 and specialized monkey, and that we must look to a 

 lower source for the origin of the human stem, to one 

 where more generalized conditions obtained ; indeed, to 

 a type sufficiently far back in time and low down in the 

 animal series as to be the progenitor of the monkeys and 

 man. The beginning of the Miocene period is pointed out 

 as a very remarkable one in the history of the world, during 

 which many of the initial types of our existing genera were 

 formed, and amongst others the first monkey succeeding 

 the lemurs of the preceding Eocene period. It is during 

 this epoch that we must seek for the stem proper of man, 

 and that common to the monkeys, or to both of these sub- 

 orders. According to Cope, man has descended directly 

 from the lemurs, without passing by way of the monkeys 

 and Anthropoids, the lemurs themselves coming through 

 the Marsupials. Beyond this the genealogy of man is 

 merged with that of the Mammalia, of which the first 

 representatives existed as far back as the Trias. 



Regarding the question of the unity or plurality of origin 

 of man the author has not very much to say, and although 

 he has reasoned on the assumption of the monophyletic 

 hypothesis of the human species throughout the work — 

 that is to say, that man has originated from a single stem — 

 he considers that there is not sufficient evidence to show 

 clearly one way or other whether this is the case, or that 

 man has a double stem of origin developed during one 

 epoch, or at two epochs separated from one another by a 

 considerable interval of time. This question has yet to 

 be definitely solved with respect to the monkeys, not- 

 withstanding the fact that some American zoologists 

 have shown that the monkeys of the New World have 

 not the same origin as those of the Old World, which, if 

 substantiated, would support the argument of a double 

 cradle of origin for man — namely, according to the 



