THE ORIGIN OF MAN 121 



are few points in the whole of human anatomy upon which 

 one could better defend the thesis that Man had evolved by 

 no such simple route. 



It has not been only the defenders of distinctions who have 

 made their mistakes, and no such splendid fallacies as the 

 theory of the " transitory " fissures can be laid at their door. 

 But, though the ill-fated campaign of the hippocampus minor 

 and the posterior lobe died a violent death amidst ridicule and 

 loud-voiced triumph that all the world might hear, the " transi- 

 tory fissures " were quietly laid to rest. No song of triumph 

 was sung over their grave and even those who slew them 

 turned silent from their last resting-place. And yet a great 

 blow had been dealt in destroying for ever the far-reaching 

 theories built upon such flimsy foundations. For the transi- 

 tory fissures, which are present upon preserved human foetal 

 brains of the third, fourth and fifth months, not being the 

 forerunners of permanent human fissures, were said to repre- 

 sent cortical patterns of the lower animals, corresponding to 

 the phase through which the human embryo, recapitulating 

 its ancestral story, was passing. Here was demonstrable 

 evidence of the stages through which Man had passed in his 

 evolution his whole phylogeny mirrored on his developing 

 cerebral cortex. This was proof conclusive of the route by 

 which Man had his origin. And now we know that these 

 transitory fissures are mere artificial creases, due to shrinking 

 of the thin, soft material of which the developing cerebral 

 hemisphere is composed. As a withered apple puckers, so 

 are the transitory fissures formed. This is material more fit 

 for the columns of Punch than any deductions about the 

 " hippopotamus minor." But the transitory fissures have 

 slipped quietly away from us without a final gibe, without 

 even an adequate obituary notice. 



Man. is an animal which has evolved, and which has taken 

 his present dominant position, almost entirely by cerebral 

 advance : of that there is no doubt whatever. But the question, 

 Has this cerebral advance been made along the lines of the 

 systematic arrangement of the order Primates ? will, nowadays, 

 receive a widely different set of answers. The most highly 



