Seen and Lost. 383 



ing chin ; to meet such a man face to face in 

 Piccadilly would frighten a nervous persou of the 

 present time. Bat his teeth were not unlike our 

 own, only very much larger and more powerful, 

 and well adapted to their work of masticating the 

 flesh, underdone and possibly raw, of mammoth and 

 rhinoceros. If, then, this living man recalls a type 

 of the past, it is of a remoter past, a more primitive 

 man, the volume of whose history is missing from 

 the geological record. To speculate on such a 

 subject seems idle and useless ; and when I coveted 

 possession of that head it was not because I thought 

 that it might lead to any fresh discovery. A lower 

 motive inspired the feeling. I wished for it only 

 that I might bring it over the sea, to drop it like a 

 new apple of discord, suited to the spirit of the 

 times, among the anthropologists and evolutionists 

 generally of this old and learned world. Inscribed, 

 of course, " To the most learned," but giving no 

 locality and no particulars. I wished to do that for 

 the pleasure — not a very noble kind of pleasure, I 

 allow — of witnessing from some safe hiding-place 

 the stupendous strife that would have ensued — a 

 battle more furious, lasting and fatal to many a 

 brave knight of biology, than was ever yet fought 

 over any bone or bony fragment or fabric ever 

 picked up, including the celebrated cranium of the 

 Neanderthal. 



