PREFATORY NOTE. 



from a lower type of humanity, though their remains 

 hitherto discovered show no definite approach towards 

 that type. The evidence is not inconsistent with 

 the doctrine of evolution, though it does not help it. 

 If Professor Virchow had paid as much attention to 

 comparative anatomy and palaeontology as he has to 

 anthropology, he would, I doubt not, be aware that 

 the equine quadrupeds of the Quaternary period do 

 not differ from existing Equidce in any more important 

 respect than these last differ from one another ; and he 

 would know that it is, nevertheless, a well-established 

 fact that, in the course of the Tertiary period, the equine 

 quadrupeds have undergone a series of changes exactly 

 such as the doctrine of evolution requires. Hence 

 sound analogical reasoning justifies the expectation 

 that, when we obtain the remains of Pliocene, Miocene, 

 and Eocene Anthropida, they will present us with the 

 like series of gradations, notwithstanding the fact, if it 

 be a fact, that the Quaternary men, like the Quaternary 

 horses, differ in no essential respect from those which 

 now live. 



I believe that the state of our knowledge on this 

 question is still justly summed up in words written 

 some seventeen years ago : 



" In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains 

 of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take 

 us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form by 



