400 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



by the capacity and form of their crania, there is less difference than exists 

 between the former and the European race. 



If we wish to establish the relation between man and the inferior 

 animals we must necessarily admit, according to our Professor, that 

 between the Neanderthal man and the more elevated type of the great 

 family of apes, the Catarhines, or tailless, there is less difference than 

 is seen between the inferior link of the Catarhines and the more elevated 

 Platyrhines, or those with tails, and of which we ignore the transition 

 species. We must, therefore, admit with Huxley, that the human species 

 forms a natural family which can now be called the Anthropini, a family 

 which is connected with the Catarhines in the same way as the latter is 

 united with that of the Platyrhines, forming thus a superior group in the 

 zoological scale, that is the Primates, a classification already adopted by the 

 celebrated Linnaeus. 



For geologists and palaeontologists, therefore, there is a large field opened 

 for research, and it will be their duty to endeavour to fill up the gaps and 

 to find out the connecting links between the Anthropini and the Catarhines ; 

 and for this purpose we must turn our regards towards Central Africa, the 

 islands of Sunda, Borneo, and Sumatra, — that is, towards the regions where 

 the anthropoid species are chiefly developed, and there not in the recent 

 formations but in those of the Tertiary period, — not confining ourselves to 

 the Pliocene, but descending to the Miocene, and perhaps even to the 

 Eocene. 



These were substantially the subjects treated by the Professor, and of 

 which Dr. Forresti had proposed to give an account at a time when the Pro- 

 fessor himself gave an appendix to his former remarks in one of his subse- 

 quent lectures on fossil man, referring to the jaw discovered on the 28th of 

 March, at Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, in the diluvial strata already 

 alluded to, informing his audience at the same time of the many questions 

 that had arisen on the subject, as well as of the meeting of the dis- 

 tinguished French and English palaeontologists and geologists at Abbeville, 

 in April, and of their mutual acknowledgment of the authenticity of the 

 jaw, a drawing of which, sent him by the discoverer, was exhibited b}~ the 

 Professor. 



This rapid succession of researches and discoveries induces great hopes 

 for the progress of these studies. 



M. Virlet d'Aoust asserts that the ophite of the Pyrenees is not an erup- 

 tive rock, but a metamorphic sedimentary rock ; that it belongs to the 

 Trias formation, and represents, with the gypseous and saliferous marls, 

 the age of the Muschclkalk. Without resting content with isolated facts, 

 M. d'Aoust proposed to assure himself whether, supposing the ophite to 

 be a metamorphosed rock, its recognized position at Leez would not be 

 its normal position. It remained to verify this, and he was agreeably sur- 

 prised to find in the Barousse, — the massif of the mountains which separate 

 the Haute-Garonne from the Hautes-P3 r renees, — exactly in the direction of 

 the sections of Cierp, of Leez, of the Col de Mende, the same succession of 

 rocks, and to see the ophite, not only in the identical position, but also 

 there elevated in the planes of the other rocks in natural order. 



