ANTIQUITY OF MAN 65 



nature by reflecting here and there, a ray from the infinite source 

 of truth." 



The Edinburgh audience was enthusiastic, but the 

 publication of the reports of the lectures was followed by 

 bitter and indeed scurrilous attacks, including such choice 

 expressions as "foul outrage," "vilest and beastliest 

 paradox," and "offensive, mischievous and inexcusable 

 exhibition." Huxley answered these attacks in the Scots- 

 man, sarcastically welcoming such onslaughts as affording 

 "the best security for the dissemination of my views 

 through regions which they might not otherwise reach." 



During January of this same year (1862), he began 

 to work at ethnology, a subject in which he after- 

 wards attained eminence, and his interest in which was 

 apparently first aroused during the voyage of the Rattle- 

 snake. The special study of human anatomy made in 

 connection with the evolution controversies fitted him in 

 no common degree for investigations of the kind. As to 

 the immediate cause of this new divergence, Sir Charles 

 Lyell, then writing his Antiquity of Man, had asked 

 Huxley to help him in some of the anatomical matters, 

 requesting in particular a diagram of the fragmentary 

 prehistoric skull which had recently been discovered in 

 the Neanderthal. 



The results of the examination of this skull, and of 

 another from the cave of Engis in the Meuse Valley, 

 were included in a lecture at the Royal Institution, " On 

 the Fossil Remains of Man" (Proc. Roy. Inst., iii, 

 1858-62, pp. 420-2. Read Friday, February 7, 1862. 

 Sci. Mem., ii, xxvm, p. 509). — Here is the general 

 conclusion reached : — 



"Thus it appears that the oldest known races of Man 

 differed comparatively but little in cranial conformation from 

 E 



