THE NEANDERTHAL .SKULL. 185 



human organism, it is nothing but an 

 aggregation of such corpuscules. And 

 thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns 

 out to be what may be termed the 

 structural unit of the human body. As a 

 matter of fact, the body in its earliest state 

 is a mere multiple of such units ; and in 

 its perfect condition, it is a multiple of 

 such units variously modified." * 



All these nebulous utterances, when 

 divested of scientific entanglements, may 

 be understood to mean, that by eating 

 mutton, to use the professor's words, 

 " sheep is transubstantiated into man." 

 Or if you reverse the process, you have 

 professorial authority for assuming that 

 by feeding on eagles you ought to be able 

 to fly; or that parrots would make as 

 good after-dinner speeches in articulate 

 language as Huxley himself did in 1871, 

 when at the Royal Academy dinner he 

 told the company that " parrots often 

 talked what deserves the name of sense, as 



* Huxley's Lay Sermons, pp. 140, 152. 



