4 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



which a voice exclaimed, " Why, it is the 

 exact counterpart of the NEANDERTHAL 

 SKULL ! " on which another voice, appa- 

 rently that of Professor Huxley, remarked, 

 "It is the most ape-like skull I ever saw." 

 I then recollected having read of a meeting 

 of savans held at Bonn, in 1857, when this 

 famous skull was produced, having been 

 found not long before in a cave close to the 

 village of Neanderthal. It then excited 

 great interest in the scientific world, 

 though many doubted whether it belonged 

 to the simian or the human race. When 

 it was exhibited by Professor Shafenhausen 

 at the Swansea Meeting of the British 

 Association in 1880, Professor Rolleston 

 took the skull lovingly in his arms, and 

 declared his unhesitating belief that it was 

 not that of an ape nor of an idiot, but that 

 of a savage man about 50 years of age, 

 with a small brain, but well able to hold 

 his own in the struggle for existence. 

 And Carl Vogt, a strong partisan of the 

 Atheistic development theory, acknow- 

 ledged that one of his best friends, a man 



