92 COMPARISON OF THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS. CHAP. V. 



proportions the Neanderthal skeleton does not differ from 

 the ordinary standard, so that the skeleton by no means indi- 

 cates a transition between Homo and Pithecus. 



There is doubtless, as shown in the diagram fig. 4, a nearer 

 resemblance in the outline of the Neanderthal skull to that 

 of a chimpanzee than had ever been observed before in any 

 human cranium; and Professor Huxley's description of the 

 occipital region shows that the resemblance is not confined to 

 the mere excessive prominence of the superciliaiy ridges. 



The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Nean- 

 derthal skull on Lamarck's doctrine of progressive develop- 

 ment and transmutation, or on that modification of it which 

 has of late been so ably advocated by Mr. Darwin, consists 

 in this, that the newly observed deviation from a normal 

 standard of human structure is not in a casual or random 

 direction, but just what might have been anticipated if the 

 laws of variation were such as the transmutationists require. 

 For if w^e conceive the cranium to be very ancient, it exem- 

 plifies a less advanced stage of progressive development 

 and improvement. If it be a comparatively modern race, 

 owing its i^eculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is 

 an illustration of what the botanists have called "atavism," 

 or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type, 

 which type, in proportion to its antiquity, Avould be of lower 

 grade. To this hypothesis, of a genealogical connection 

 between man and the lower animals, I shall again allude in 

 the concluding chapters. 



