﻿Vol. 66.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. lxxi 



Pithecanthropus was found in Beds 22-23, or on the supposed 

 limit between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene. 



Prom Pith ecanthr opus we pass next to the anthropoid apes 

 which make their first appearance, simultaneously with the lower 

 Catarrhine apes, in the Middle Miocene of Europe. 1 The Platyrrhine 

 monkeys are represented by fossil forms in the Santa Cruz forma- 

 tion of South America, which Prof. "W. B. Scott assigns to the 

 Miocene. These monkeys are not known, fossil or living, outside 

 of the South American continent. 



The lowest suborder of the Primates, the Lemuroidea, are first 

 met with in the Eocene of North America and Europe ; in North 

 America their remains are comparatively abundant, in France only 

 two genera are known which are supposed to belong to this group. 



Thus the stratigraphical succession in Holarctica is first Lemuroids, 

 next Catarrhine apes including the Anthropoids, and finally Man. 



So far we have been dealing with fossils, but we may now 

 turn to the evidence afforded by recent investigations in com- 

 parative anatomy. We will consider first the brain, that organ 

 of organs which before all else distinguishes the body of Man 

 from the lower animals. The taxonomic importance of the brain 

 has received general recognition from all those most competent 

 to judge ; Elliot Smith speaks of it as an organ of immense 

 classificatory value, summing up, as it were, the whole animal, 

 and displaying a marked tendency to the conservation of funda- 

 mental characters. It has been made the subject of the devoted 

 labours of a crowd of brilliant anatomists, whose names I fear to 

 mention, lest I should not complete the list ; I will only refer, 

 therefore, to my old friend Cunningham, whose recent death we 

 so deeply deplore. 



The brain of the gorilla has been very closely investigated by 

 Prof. L. Bolk," who concludes that although it recalls by many 

 peculiarities the lower Primates, yet it already possesses in a more 

 •or less highly developed state all the principal furrows of the 

 human brain, which it approaches in this respect more closely than 

 any of the other Anthropoids. As regards the frontal region, in 



1 As these pages are passing through the press, the discovery is announced 

 • of several genera of apes in the Oligocene of the Fajum : one is said to be a 

 diminutive PliopifJ/ccus. Max Schlosser, ' Zool. Anzeiger' March 1st, 1910, 

 t p. 500. 



~ ' Beitrage zur Affenanatomie, III. Das Gehirn vom Gorilla ' Zeitschr. f. 

 Morph. & Anthrop. vol. xii (1900) pp. 141-242, in particular pp. 238 & 242. 



