68 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



TWENTY-SECOND REGULAR MEETING. 



April 20, 1880. 



Pre-Social Man. 

 By L. F. WARD. 



The speaker said it might safely be given as the opinion 

 of those naturalists who accept the animal origin of the 

 human race that at some time ancKn some part of the world 

 some one group, possibly a very limited one, of the ape fam- 

 ily acquired certain of the characters which now distinguish 

 the human from the simian anatomy. These characters he 

 summed up as follows : Increased capacity of the cranium 

 and increased size of the encephalon ; greater complication 

 in the mechanism of the larynx ; the erect posture of the 

 body ; the plantigrade character of the feet ; non-oppossibil- 

 ity of the great toe ; diminished length of the arms in pro- 

 portion to the trunk ; greater or less absence of hair from 

 most of the body and limbs, and double curvature of the 

 spine. Among these points of difference there was a certain 

 inter-dependence, so that on the principle of adaptation they 

 would all flow from some one or two of the chief ones, and 

 he thought that the first of these characters to be acquired 

 by the simian ancestors of our race must have been the in- 

 creased size of brain, which might have resulted from the 

 necessity certain apes were under, of depending on superior 

 cunning for protection against animals of greater strength 

 and ferocity than themselves ; and this character once ac- 

 quired, together with the modifications resulting from the 

 substitution of terrestrial for aboreal habits, the rest would 

 follow. 



It was pointed out, too, that the immediate progenitor of 

 man among the anthropoids might have been considerably 

 nearer to the human form than any of the known anthro- 

 poids now are, as would be the case if there were a creature 

 combining the full chest of the gibbon, the skull of the 



