December 5, 1895] 



NATURE 



15 



forgiving me all my short-comings, and for the inestimable benefit 

 which you have conferred on me by giving me your friendship. 



In the evening a large number of the Fellows and their 

 guests dined together at the Hotel Metropole. Among those 

 present being M. Marey, who attended officially as President of 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences. 



DR. DUBOIS' ''MISSING LINK." 



n^HE oj^ning scientific meeting of the session of the Royal 

 -*• Dublin Society, on November 20, was of especial interest, 

 owing to the presence of Dr. Eugene Dubois, who exhibited the 

 famous remains which he di.scoveretl in Java. The chair was 

 taken by Prof.W. J. SoUas, F. R.S. Dr. Dubois read a paper " On 

 Pithcianthropus erectus : a transitional form between Man and 

 the Apes," which will very shortly be published by the Society, 

 and which was illustrated by a number of lantern slides made in 

 Dublin for this lecture. He said that when he was invited by 

 Prof. Cunningham to read a paper before the Royal Dublin 

 Society, he did not for a moment hesitate to comply, as he was 

 anxious to get as much criticism as possible. By order of the 

 Dutch Indian Government he conducted, from 1890 to 1895, ^''- 

 plorations of a fossil vertebrate fauna, of which some remains had 

 been discovered many years ago by Junghuhn and others. These 

 vertebrate remains, which were found abundantly at Trinil on 

 the southern slope of the low Kendeng Hills, were obtained 

 from beds of cemented volcanic tuff, consisting of clay, sand and 

 consolidated lapilli, which were rearranged by fluviatile action. 

 The whole formation attains a maximum thickness of over 350 

 metres. In these strata the Bengawan River has cut its channel 

 12 to 15 metres in depth. These beds lie unconformably upon 

 beds of marine marl, sand and limestone, which have recently 

 been determined by Prof. Martin to be of Pliocene age. In 

 August 1891, Dr. Dubois came upon a very rich layer of fossil 

 bones, in which the remains in question were found ; this 

 occurred in the lapilli deposit, or fine gravel, about five inches 

 above a bed of coarse gravel, which rests on a black clay. The 

 layer of bones lies a little below the dry-season level of the 

 river. The river-bank was excavated with such care that the 

 position of each specimen was accurately known. In Septem- 

 ber a wisdom tooth was discovered, and a month later the 

 skull-cap was found about one metre distant, and at precisely 

 the same level. The work was interrupted by the rainy season, 

 but was renewed in May 1892 ; the left femur was found in 

 August, at distance of about 15 metres from the calvaria, and in 

 October a second molar, at a distance of 3 metres from where 

 the skull-cap was found, and in a direction towards the place 

 where the femur had been dug out. Among the associated 

 animals may be mentioned large numbers of Stegodon, 

 specimens of hippopotamus (Hexaprotodon), hya;na, several 

 species of deer, Bubulus, a gigantic pangolin three times as large 

 as the existing Javan form, &c. The four remains were all in 

 the same state of fossilisation as the animal remains, the weight 

 of the femur being nearly three times that of a recent femur. 

 Doubt had been expressed whether the four remains lielonged to 

 the same individual ; Dr. Dubois himself had no doubt on this 

 point, as he had often found bones from the self-same skeleton, 

 and even fragments of a single bone, at similar distances apart ; 

 never had he found a complete skeleton. He had good reasons 

 for believing that the animals perished in volcanic catastrophes, 

 and their corpses were brought down a large Pliocene river, so 

 that before the bones were finally deposited and buried they 

 must have been separated by the rotting of the flesh ; and there 

 ire evidences of crocodiles having preyed upon the carcases. 



The femur is so human-like that nearly all anatomists did not 

 hesitate to declare it to be human ; but up to the present no 

 human remains had been found in the Lower Pleistocene, the 

 oldest only reach down to about the middle of that period. 

 Nobody had the slightest doubt that the bone must hal^e 

 l^elonged to a form with an erect posture. Only Virchow 

 repeatedly maintained, even after seeing ft, that it belonged to 

 an a]>e, probably Hylobates, because it has, in his opinion, a 

 straight, shaft such as never occurs in man ; but the au Hence 

 could easily see that the shaft of the fossil was by no means 

 straight, and Dr. Dubois demonstrated some features which he 

 had never seen in human femora, but which he believed to be 

 simian characters. 



¥01 normal human proportions the capacity of the cranium 



NO. 1362, VOL. 53] 



was too small for the femur ; but microcephalic skulls of the 

 class which may be regarded as atavistic can be even relatively 

 smaller, while the height of the body is more than that of 

 Pithecanthropus, as computed from the length of the femur. 

 Such was the case of the microcephalic idiot, Joe, described by 

 Prof. Cunningham. The length of the Java cranium is 185 mm., 

 its breadth 130 mm. The same dimensions in an average 

 female chimpanzee's skull are 132 and 91, and those of a 

 Hylobates 95 and 69. The internal capacity he estimated at 

 1000 cubic centimetres. The largest skulls of the anthropoid 

 apes average about 500 c.c. Normal human skulls are known 

 of an fequal or even less size than the Java cranium ; but these 

 small skulls are always associated with a small body. The 

 chances are enormously against this being the skull of an idiot, 

 and no microcephalic skull shows such a flattening of the 

 parietal region. The orbital part of the skull is quite different 

 from that of man, but the inclination of the nuchal plane is far 

 more human than simian. From the genus Hylobates he could 

 only find a difference in size and in the downward slope of the 

 occiput ; the resemblance between the two was most striking if 

 the former was enlarged two diameters. 



A divergence of opinion also prevailed as to whether the 

 teeth were human or simian ; they were larger than human 

 teeth, and the cusps showed a relative development which was 

 characteristically simian. 



From the whole geological and anatomical investigation it 

 followed that in each of the four specimens they had evidence of 

 a form intermediate and transitional between man and anthro- 

 poid apes. The problem was as to the exact position of this 

 creature in the tree of genealogical descent. 



Dr. D. J. Cunningham, Hon. Secretary of the Society, believed 

 the specimens to be of supreme importance. Discussing Dr. 

 Dubois' memoir at a previous meeting of the Royal Dublin 

 Society, he had expressed the view that the cranium was dis- 

 tinctly human, and he still held that an unbiassed study of the 

 published description and figures could lead to no other con- 

 clusion. Now, however, when he was brought face to face with 

 the actual specimen, he failed to see in it any decided and leading 

 human feature, except its capacity of 1000 c.c. He agreed with 

 Dr. Dubois in considering that it most resembled the cranium of 

 Hylobates, although he was of opinion that Dr. Dubois slightly 

 exaggerated the relative height and quality of the cranial arch in 

 Hylobates. In this respect he considered that, if fairly tested, the 

 fossil cranium would be found to be superior to any known ape. 

 Certainly the cranial arch was vastly superior to that of a gorilla, 

 chimpanzee, or orang, and he believed also that it was relatively 

 fuller and loftier than the most highly-arched Hylobates cranium. 

 Dr. Dubois placed some stress upon the inclination of the nuchal 

 area of the occipital bone, and thought that in this there was a 

 human characteristic ; but he (Dr. Cunningham) thought that 

 this region of the cranium w;as extremely ape-like, and, further, 

 he did not altogether consider that the means which Dr. Dubois 

 had taken to determine the degree of this inclination were calcu- 

 lated to yield absolutely trustworthy results. 



With regard to the femur, he had nothing to add to what he 

 had previously said on this subject. It was a human bone, and 

 while he fully appreciated the distinctive points alluded to by 

 Dr. Dubois, he thought that Dr. Dubois had not made sufficient 

 allowance for the variation to which this bone was liable. It 

 was, to say the least of it, strange that a thigh-bone of such un- 

 doubted antiquity should exhibit none of those characteristics 

 which we were in the habit of associating with prehistoric femora, 

 as well as with the femora of rude and savage races of the present 

 day. It showed no signs which would indicate that the indi- 

 vidual to whom it belonged was in the habit of assuming the 

 squatting attitude. 



In so far as the two molar teeth were concerned, he still held 

 that the features which they exhibited were more human than 

 simian, although it could not be denied that they also exhibited 

 some very decided ape- like characters. 



The question as to the place which should be assigned to the 

 fossil form on the genealogical tree was a most intere.sting one. 

 On this point he differed entirely from Dr. Dubois. Dr. Dubois 

 placed Pithecanthropus below the point of devarication of the 

 anthropoid apes from the human line. Dr. Cunningham, on the 

 other hand, placed it on the human line, a short distance above 

 the point at which the anthropoid branch is given off. In urging 

 this view, he stated that he could not believe that an aj^e-form 

 with a cranial capacity of looo could be the progenitor of the 

 man-like apes, the largest of which had a rapacity of only 500. 



