44 THE SKULL THEORY 



thoroughly proved by the essential agreement of the 

 internal bodily structure of man and of apes, and by 

 the identity of their embryonic development, as I have 

 fully shown in my " Evolution of Man " (chaps, xix. and 

 xxvi.) The mode and manner in which he here puts 

 palaeontology in the foreground, and throws on the 

 theory of descent the task of producing an unbroken 

 gradation of fossil transitional forms between the 

 apes and man, is very indicative of Virchow's ignor- 

 ance of this zoological question in which I, as a 

 professional zoologist, must decisively declare his in- 

 competence. The reasons why such a solution of the 

 problem is not to be expected, the extraordinary im- 

 perfection of the palseontological record, the natural 

 impediments to the palseontological evidence of the 

 genealogical table, have been so lucidly unfolded by 

 Darwin himself (chaps, ix. and x. of the " Origin of 

 Species ") that I am obliged once more to come to the 

 conclusion that Virchow has never read it with any 

 attention. 



Besides, long before Darwin, the gifted Lyell, the 

 great originator of modern geology, showed clearly and 

 convincingly how, for many reasons, the greater part 

 of the fossil series must remain most imperfect, and 

 these reasons were at a later period so often and so 

 fully discussed (by myself among others, in chap. xv. 



