HOMINID. 793 
birth. The abnormalities may be either altogether soft or they may 
contain bone, but in no case adequately known is there any increase in 
the number of vertebrae which normally fuse to form the terminal 
portion of the human vertebral column, known as the coccyx. 
The arguments by which Darwin: and others have sought 
to show that man arose from an ancestral type common to 
him and to the higher apes, are the same as those used to 
substantiate the general doctrine of descent. The Descent 
of Man is the expansion of a chapter in the Origin 
of Species. The arguments may be briefly summarised :— 
(1) Physiological. The bodily life of man is like that of 
monkeys; men and monkeys are subject to similar 
diseases ; various human traits of gesture, expression, etc., 
are paralleled among the “brutes”; ‘‘theromorphic” 
monsters corroborate the alliance. 
(2) Morphological. The structure of man is like that of 
the anthropoid apes; none of his anatomical distinctions, 
except that of a heavy brain, are momentous; there are 
about eighty vestigial structures in his musculay, skeletal, 
and other systems. 
(3) Historical. Certainties in regard to remains of 
primitive man are few, but his individual development reads 
like a recapitulation of ancestral history. 
To many, man seems too marvellous to have been natur- 
ally evolved ; to others the evidence seems insufficient ; but 
if the doctrine of descent is true for other organisms, it is 
likely to be true for man also. ; 
As to the antiquity of the human race, it is certain that 
men lived in Europe in the later stages of the Ice Age, and 
there are indications of human life in Pliocene times: No 
fossil remains are known till the Pleistocene. But, as it is 
certain that man could not have arisen from any of the 
known anthropoid apes, and as it is likely that he arose 
from an ancestral stock common to them and to him, it 
seems justifiable to date the antiquity of the human race 
not later than the time when the anthropoid apes are known 
to have been established as a distinct. family. This takes 
us back to Miocene ages. 
If man was naturally evolved, the factors in the process 
require elucidation, but in regard to these we can only 
speculate. From what we know of men and monkeys, it 
