606 BEPORT — 1882. 



enlarge as a mere result of the quickening given to it from tlie forces which then 

 had to he contended with. Implements wherewith to secure food and weapons 

 to defend life would first be extemporised, then designedly constructed. Caves 

 would be used, and pit-shelters excavated, and all the marks of developing man 

 would be evoked. May not those disputed evidences of human handiwork such as 

 Miocene and Pliocene implements, and cut bones, be the work of pithecoid man ? 

 At least during later Miocene and Pliocene times such a struggle of surviving apes 

 would naturally have taken place in this region as a mere result of the climatal and 

 geographical conditions of that period in Southern Europe and Asia. 



The remains marldng such a struggle ought to he found in part among the 

 deposits which flank the Eocene-capped mouutams with which this region abounds. 

 Moreover, these deposits would have been made accessible by having been inclined 

 by the gradual elevation of these mountains known to have taken place in the 

 Pliocene and Pliocene epochs. These deposits cannot have been very greatly de- 

 nuded away, for where glaciation has been greatest deposits of that date are found. 

 They are therefore likely to be found abundantly elsewhere within this region. 



6. On the Length cif the Second Toe of tJie Human Foot. By J. Park 



Harrison, 31. A. 



7. Eho Mid FJoiv in Mental Endowment. 

 By George Harris, LL.D., F.S.A. 



The theory propounded by the writer of this paper is that there is frequently 

 to be discovered in a succession of persons in the generation of particular families, 

 an ebb and flow both of mental capacity and moral qualities ; a person of ordinary 

 endowment having a son of superior power, who has a son of great capacity, by 

 which he becomes distiijguished and rises in the world, although his own son turns 

 out to be an individual of capacity below the average. 



The writer referred to the question of the supposed transmission of endowments 

 acquired by cultivation, and started the inquiry wliether in the cases of trans- 

 mission of qualities to the ollspring, the intellectual or moral condition of the 

 parent at the time of the procreation of the child, is that from which the trans- 

 mission of such qualities is derived. 



The writer also referred to the biographies of distinguished persons, where 

 accounts are given of the qualities of their progenitors and descendants, as affording 

 proof of the correctness of his theory. 



The conclusion at which the writer arrived was that there is existent in our 

 constitution certain operations and impulses analogous to, or corresponding with, 

 those of tide and reflux, exhaustion and repletion, action and reaction, wearing 

 out and revivifying, in the material world, e'Ner in process, as regards the origina- 

 tion, development, and growth of our moral and intellectual endowments, as well 

 as in the properties of our physical frames, which possess a never-failing influence 

 in respect to the transmission of these qualities and their manifestation in the ofl- 

 sprino-, particular endowments going on for generations increasing, until they reach 

 tlieir climax, when they at once decline. 



In the animal world he pointed out that an analogous growth and decline of 

 qualities may be observed. 



He also remarked that education and training, to some extent, but only very 

 partially, can account for the phenomenon in question. 



