NATURE 



433 



THURSDAY, MARCH o. iQOS- 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 

 Morphology and Anthropology. .4 Handbook for 

 Students. By W. L. H. Duckworth, M.A. Pp. 

 x.\vii + 546. (Cambridge: University Press, 1904.) 

 Price i5i'. net. 

 Studies from tlie Anthropological Laboratory, the 

 .Anatomy Sclwol, Cambridge. By W. L. H. Duck- 

 worth, M..\. Pp. X + 291. (Cambridge: Uni- 

 versity Press, 1904.) Price lo.s. net. 

 THE publication of Mr. Duckworth's te.\l-book for 

 students, bearing on its title page the rather 

 vague terms, " Morphology and Anthropology," 

 marks the culmination of the remarkable movement 

 initiated by the publication of Huxley's " Man's 

 Place in Nature " in 1863, and quickened in 1871 

 bv the appearance of Darwin's " Descent of Man." 

 At the commencement of this movement the subject 

 of man's origin had its abode in the divinity schools; 

 it was taught by theologians; the opening chapters 

 of Genesis constituted the accepted text-book ; now, 

 in 1905, the subject is assigned to the anthropological 

 laboratory ; the lecturer on physical anthropology is 

 its custodian, and the text-book is the work now 

 under review. 



In a clearly written introductory chapter Mr. Duck- 

 worth defines the subject-matter of his book as an 

 Inquirj' into (i) man's zoological position; (2) the 

 nature of his ancestry. That such a work is needed 

 there can be no doubt. Ever since Darwin and 

 Huxley gave this subject a legitimate place in the 

 hands of biologists, experts have been busy as ants, 

 seeking, collecting, and storing facts in the tome 

 upon tome that annually come to crowd our book- 

 shelves. The embryological historv of man, anthro- 

 poid and ape have become known ; important addi- 

 tions have been made to the geological record ; our 

 knowledge of the structure of the Primates has in- 

 creased twenty-fold ; all the additional evidence of 

 thirty years thus lay at Mr. Duckworth's disposal 

 awaitintr systematisation. He has every qualification 

 for the task ; he has devoted many years to examin- 

 ing and extending the evidence on which our con- 

 ception of man's origin rests. " Studies from the 

 Anthropological Laboratory," the second work in- 

 cluded in this review, containing thirty-six papers 

 dealing with various aspects of primatology, 

 guarantee his industry and first-hand knowledge. 

 He has the advantage, too, of having at his disposal 

 the great anthropological collections accumulated by 

 Prof. Macalister, and free access to one of the best 

 libraries of the world. 



It is natural to expect that Mr. Duckworth, having 

 so much additional evidence at his command, 

 is able to define man's position in the animal 

 kingdom with a greater degree of precision than 

 was possible at the time when Huxley and Darwin 

 wrote. Huxley, it will be remembered, restored man 

 to the position originally assigned to him by Linnaeus, 

 namely, that of a family in the order of Primates, 

 NO. 1845, VOL. 71] 



because, on the evidence he was able to adduce, man 

 differed less in point of structure from the family of 

 anthropoids than the anthropoids from the family 

 of the Old World monkeys. Further, Huxley re- 

 garded the chimpanzee and gorilla as the animal 

 forms most nearly related to man. In these two re- 

 spects Darwin agreed with Huxley. In the classifi- 

 cation adopted- by Mr. Duckworth, man retains the 

 position assigned to him by Huxlev. Mr. Duck- 

 worth's style in producing evidence and conflicting 

 theories is open, frank, and impartial, but in setting 

 forth his conclusions he is so eminently non-committal 

 that it is difficult to cite a passage which concisely 

 expresses his conception of the exact position which 

 man holds with regard to other families of Primates. 

 On p. 226 the following passage occurs : — 



" But no single example among the larger 

 Simiida can be pointed out with confidence, as 

 embodying the characters of the human ancestor at 

 the simian stage of evolution more completely than 

 any other, though there is a slight margin of evidence 

 in favour of the Chimpanzee, rather than the Gorilla 

 or the Orang-utan." 



Thus it will be seen that the matter of man's 

 zoological position remains where Huxley left it. 

 Huxley had an incomparable faculty of drawing 

 Just conclusions from limited data, but few men who 

 are experts on this matter will agree that Mr. Duck- 

 worth has utilised the evidence at his disposal to 

 the fullest extent possible. 



Nor has the evidence which has accumulated in 

 the last thirty-three years permitted Mr. Duckworth 

 to make a more definite statement as to the ancestral 

 chain or phylogenetic path of man than was made 

 by Darwin in his first edition of the " Descent of 

 Man " in 1871. 



" The Simiadae," wrote Darwin, " then branched 

 into two great stems, the New World and Old World 

 Monkeys; from the latter, at a remote period, Man 

 the Wonder and Glory of the L'niverse proceeded " 



(vol. i., p. 213, ist ed.). 



Mr. Duckworth's conclusions in this matter are 

 summed up at p. 542 as follows : — 



" But while it is shown that the Hominid^ have 

 in their evolution passed through a stage which is 

 better reproduced by the Simiidse (anthropoids) than 

 by any other of the Primates; it is practically certain 

 that the modern Simiidae did not themselves figure 

 in the ancestrv of man and that they are themselves 

 specialised in a high degree, more specialised in many 

 ways than the Hominida- and more specialised than 

 their own ancestors. .\s Klaatsch puts it, the 

 ancestors of the modern Simiidae were more anthro- 

 poid than the actual Simiida;, just as the ancestor of 

 the Hominida; was more pithecoid than -modern Man. 

 .And the balance of evidence indicates that the line 

 of human ancestry would, were the material still 

 available, be traceable down to the lowest Primates 

 (Lemuroidea) and even to the lowest Mammals. 

 Moreover, it is undeniable that the Hominidas have 

 retained in hand and foot some features of an early 

 ancestor, from which they have departed less in type 

 than have the (modern) Cercopithecidce and Simiidfe. 

 But detailed information on these points is still lack- 

 i ing." 



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