THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 197 



We are unable to give any definite 

 number of years to Huxley's estimate for 

 the antiquity of man, because in place of 

 limiting himself to the comparatively 

 modest calculation of Professor Waitz, 

 who only demands 35,000 million years 

 for man's age on earth, Professor Huxley, 

 in his speech at the Norwich Meeting of 

 the British Association, asked if the dif- 

 ferent types of certain skulls did not 



" Point to a vastly remote period of 

 time ? And if so, did it not throw back 

 the appearance of man upon the globe to an 

 era immeasurably more remote than has ever 

 yet been assigned to it by the boldest spe- 

 culators ? " * 



This seems to imply that if Professor 

 Haeckel declares that the direct ancestors 

 of man were certain " extinct worms," and 

 Mr. Darwin teaches that the larvae of the 

 ascidian tadpole were the primeval parents 

 of the old-world monkey, which gradually 

 evolved learned professors such as Huxley 



* See Appendix T. 



