CHAPTER III. 



THE SKULL THEORY AND THE APE THEORY. 



INASMUCH as Virchow persists in treating the theory 

 of descent as an " unproved hypothesis," inasmuch as 

 he ignores all the forcible evidences of that hypothesis, 

 he deprives himself of the right of speaking a decisive 

 word in this, the most important scientific dispute of 

 the present day. Virchow is, in fact, simply incom- 

 petent in the great question of evolution, as he is 

 deficient in the greater part of that knowledge more 

 especially morphological knowledge which is indis- 

 pensable to forming a judgment upon it. Hence on 

 the turning-point of the whole matter viz., the pro- 

 blem as to the origin of species he can have no 

 opinion, as he has never turned his attention to the 

 systematic treatment of species : those transitions of 

 one species into another, which he asks to see, abound 

 on all sides, as is well known to every systematic 

 naturalist. Only consider, for example, the genera of 

 Eubus and Salix among the living plants of the present 

 period, and the Ammonites and Brachiopoda among 



