Notices of Memoirs. 419 



III. — The Hunterian Oration, February 14, 1901. By N. C 

 Macnamara, F.R.C.S. 8vo. London, 1901. — This Oration, to which 

 no title is given, seems to deal with the labours of Hunter and 

 others on the subject of craniology and the light which it is capable 

 of throwing on the prehistoric inhabitants of Western Europe, and 

 of the evolution of the race of men to which we belong. Mr. 

 Macnamara points out that the inhabitants of Western Europe in 

 the later Tertiary and early Quaternary period, as regards the 

 ossification and form, especially of the frontal region, of their 

 skulls, more closely resembled that of the chimpanzee than the 

 race of men now inhabiting Europe. Our search for knowledge 

 is still hampered by the limited supply of the remains of man, but 

 a good deal of general evidence has been obtained from the stone 

 implements so common when properly searched for. Mr. Macnamara 

 believes that the evidence collected proves the existence of man in 

 Tertiary times. With regard to the skull of Pithecanthropus, he 

 concurs with the conclusion arrived at by Professor Schwalbe, that 

 taking both its form and capacity into consideration, " it is on the 

 border line between that of man and anthropoid apes"; it is more 

 nearly allied to the skulls of the Neanderthal group of men than it 

 is to the crania of the higher apes ; but it is much nearer in 

 anatomical characters to the skull of the chimpanzee than it is to 

 the cranium of the average adult European of the present day. The 

 fact that the inferior gyri of the frontal lobes of the brain are well 

 marked, and that the superficies of this convolution of the brain is 

 double that possessed by the largest known anthropoid ape, suggests 

 that the Java man had in some slight degree the faculty of speech, 

 and that his intellectual capacity was higher than that of any 

 anthropoid ape we are acquainted with. 



Mr. Macnamara also points out that it should be clearly understood 

 that up to the present no bona fide human remains belonging to the 

 early Palaeolitic period have been discovered in Western Europe 

 which are not of the same type as those of the Neanderthal group of 

 men, whose fore and hind limbs indicate that they were a short ape- 

 like and powerful race of beings whose average stature did not 

 exceed five feet. The skulls of men found in geological formations 

 of the Post-Glacial period have the same physical type as those of the 

 strictly early Palgeolithic epoch of Western Europe, but with increased 

 brain capacity. These skulls, in the opinion of the author, indicate 

 a gradual transition in form from the ape-like characters of the 

 previous period to a higher standard, and certainly to a much 

 greater skull capacity, especially in the frontal region. Mr. 

 Macnamara remarks on the fact that in the i-ecent elections held 

 in this country, when the question at issue was one in which the 

 whole of the people of Great Britain were deeply interested, a large 

 proportion of the inhabitants of England and Scotland, mainly of 

 Anglo-Saxon origin, voted together on the subject ; whereas 

 a contrary opinion regarding the same question was held by the 

 greater proportion of the people of Ireland, and to a large extent 

 by the Welsh, most of whom are derived from Ibero- Mongolian 



