1892.] The Contemporary Evolution of Man. 459 



also to the living Anthropoidea. This is also the only tenable 



teleological view, for many of our inherited organs are at 

 present non-purposive, in some cases even harmful, as the 

 appendix vermiforniis. 



From the typical mammalian stand-point man is a degen- 

 erate animal ; his senses are inferior in acuteiiess; his upright 

 position, while giving him a superior aspect, entails many 

 disadvantages, as recently enumerated by Clevenger, 1 for the 

 body is not fully adapted to it: his feet are not superior to 

 those of many lower Eocene plantigrades; his teeth are 

 mechanically far inferior to those of the domestic cat. In fact, 

 if an unbiased comparative anatomist should reach this planet 

 from Mars he could only pass favorable comment upon the 

 perfection of the hand and the massive brain ! Holding these 



structures. I refer especially to civilized man. who is more 

 prodigal with his inheritance than the savage. By virtue of 

 the hand and the brain he is, nevertheless, the best adapted 

 and most cosmopolitan vertebrate. The man of Neanderthal 

 or Spy, with retreating forehead and brain of small cubic 

 capacity 2 was limited both in his ideas and his powers of 

 travel, yet he was our superior in some points of otteological 

 structure. But the period of Neanderthal was recent com- 

 pared with that in which some of our rudimentary organs 

 were serviceable, such as the vermiform appendix or the pan- 

 niculus carnosus 3 muscle. These rudiments, in tui 

 genetic when we consider the age of the two antique sense 

 organs in the optic thalamus, the remnants of the median or 

 pineal eye and the pituitary body, both of which were 

 undoubtedly present, and probably useful, in the recently dis- 

 covered Silurian fishes ! 



disadvantages of the Upright Position, article in American i at 



trefages and others. See Fraipont 

 muscle in the quadrupeds. 



