902 The American Naturalist. [October, 
ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.’ 
Dr. Brinton on the Beginning of Man.’—Dr. Brinton con- 
tributes a characteristically readable and inconsistent article to the 
Forum on this subject, which is the most important and interesting 
among the many presented by the science of biology. It is also at the 
same time a prime question among archeologists, but as the archeologi- 
cal materials do not lend themselves to its solution, the cultivators of 
that science have not generally devoted much time to its investigation. 
Archeology begins, as Dr. Brinton says, with the evidence of human 
industry ; that is, it begins after man had become man, and not before. 
It, therefore, commences where paleontologic biology leaves off, and 
does not embrace the question of his ancestry, which belongs to the 
latter science. Nevertheless, Dr. Brinton, well known as a distin- 
guished archeologist, discusses the question of the ape-ancestry of man 
in an entertaining, and to some bere —Ü ——ÀÓ But I 
have some fault to find with h t, and 
as it is caleulated to encourage some uode i olives, I propose to 
state them. 
First there is to be noticed throughout, the flavor of Virchoffism, 
which has been so vigorously exploited by Haeckel. Virchow appears 
to be unalterably opposed tothe hypothesis of the ape-ancestry of man, 
and he uses frequent opportunities of casting ridieule on it. He even 
oes so far as to ignore, when convenient to his argument, such evi- 
dence as there is in support of it, in a way which does not impress me 
with his capacity for fairness. His conspicuous fallacy is his neg- 
lect of the biological evidence for the doctrine of creation of organic 
species by descent, so far as regards man. This isso overwhelming, that 
biologists area unit in Meery in it. are cannot be excluded, for his 
zoological affinities with th Man 
is not an example of an isolated type, of which many can be found among 
animals and plants, but his relatives are conspicuously close to him in 
structure, so that if evolution is true, man is one of the most evident 
illustrations of it. Yet Brinton says “a dozen years ago when Dar- 
winism was at its height, an advanced scientific thinker would have 
felt compelled to maintain that the species man was necessarily a de- 
| This department is edited by H. C. Mercer, University of Pennsylvania. 
"The Beginning of Man and the Age of the Race by Dr. D. G. Brinton; Zhe For- 
um, Dec., 1893, p. 452. 
^ 
