42 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



For old Adam was fashioned the first of his kind, 

 With a tail like a monkey, full yard and a span ; 



And when Nature cut off this appendage behind, 

 Why then woman was made of the tail of the man / "" 



More than a quarter of a century elapsed 

 after Moore had thus explained the teach- 

 ing of the Jewish Rabbins respecting the 

 Origin of Man, when the anonymous 

 author of a work entitled Vestiges of the 

 Natural History of Creation, evolved a 

 scheme of human geology showing that 

 Adam's immediate ancestor was a chim- 

 panzee, and his remote ancestor a maggot! 

 He grounded his conclusion upon these 

 two points 1st, That the basis of all 

 vegetable and animal substance consists of 

 nucleated cells, i.e., cells having " granules" 

 within them. 2dly, That the organization 

 of man gradually passes through conditions- 

 resembling a worm, a fish, a reptile, a bird, 

 and the lower mammalia, before it attains 

 its maturity in man. 



But this theory of man's descent from 

 worms was one of the many plagiarisms 

 of the learned professors of the 19th 



