ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 17 



become atrophied the long crests to which they were 

 attached. The result of such change would necessarily be 

 reduction of prognathism and the vertical development of 

 the face. The physical modifications and the intellectual 

 would meanwhile be interacting on each other and an 

 enlargement of the brain, and consequently, the cranial 

 cavity would result. The form and proportions to which the 

 anthropoid pithecoid and pithecoid anthropoid as well as 

 primitive man had attained, would render a dorsal position, 

 in rest, the most natural. The result of such a position 

 long continued would be a decrease and ultimate disap- 

 pearance of the hair on the back, and in association there- 

 with a sparseness on the rest of the body, except on the 

 head, wherever its use as a protection against the sun 

 would preserve it. That on the face would be cultivated 

 in the male as an ornament and evidence of virility. 

 Man would be the final product of all these agencies. 

 The last stages in this evolution could only have taken 

 place in a tropical country. It is probable that Africa 

 might have been the specific one, and that from this birth- 

 place of the human race emigration has peopled all other 

 lands. 



NINTH REGULAR MEETING. 



October 7, 1879. 



An account was given by the chair, Vice President Mal- 

 lery, of the proceedings of the Anthropological Society of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 at its meeting held at Saratoga, New York. 



Prof. Mason gave an account of the proceedings of the 

 Danish Historical Society as related to the preservation of 

 ancient monuments. He reviewed the laws passed within 

 the last two or three centuries relative to the preservation of 

 national remains, and showed that these laws had arisen 

 through a desire to preserve from mutilation these records 

 2 



