THE OEIGIN OF MAN 129 



type ; it is another matter altogether to swallow the camel 

 representing the belief that the skull of a unique type of 

 humanity and the jaw of an ape, unique in its provenance, 

 came into such close approximation upon the Downs of 

 Sussex — the one having lost its own jaw, and the other its 

 own skull, before their chance meeting. 



But, whatever demands Eoanthropus may make upon our 

 belief in the antiquity of Man, the Australian skull unearthed 

 in 1884, but only properly described by Dr. S. A. Smith, of 

 Sydney University, in the present year, increases our wonder, 

 and leaves us gaping at the possibilities of future discoveries 

 in the phylogeny of our species. 



It is impossible to discuss more than the most simple facts 

 concerning this evidence in the limits of so short a lecture ; 

 but within these limits the most salient features may be stated. 

 This skull is highly mineralised, it is a " fossil " in the general 

 acceptance of that particularly elastic word, it was washed by 

 spate waters from a site 7 or 8 feet below the present earth- 

 level at Talgai in the district of the Darling Downs of Southern 

 Queensland. It is of little use to label it as " Pleistocene," 

 since the extension of that term from Europe to Austraha 

 implies but little in actual geological sequence. Nevertheless 

 far better evidence than that involved in a mere name is to 

 hand. The skull is contemporaneous with extinct marsupials, 

 such as the great Diprotodon and Thylacoleo ; it is also con- 

 temporaneous with the fossilised teeth of a Eutherian animal — 

 the dog. That the Eutherian dingo was a trespasser upon the 

 Metatherian fauna of Australia every zoologist knows, but 

 here is evidence that the trespass was made at a very remote 

 period, and at this remote period the Eutherian dog also had 

 as a contemporary another Eutherian mammal — Man. The 

 supposition is that they trespassed in company ; but think for 

 a moment what this supposition implies. It means that these, 

 almost the only Eutherian mammals which broke in upon the 

 isolation of the Australian Metatherian population, came in the 

 remote past, when many extinct Metatherians were flourishing, 

 and that they alone were able to achieve the journey. No land 

 bridge let them in, else a host of Eutherian followers would 



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