400 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
by the capacity and form of their crania, there is less difference than exists 
between the former and the European race. 
IP we wish to establish the relation between man and the inferior [ 
animals we must necessarily admit, according to our Professor, that 
between the ^S^eanderthal 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 Linnseus. 
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 tiu'u 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 2Htli 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 by 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 melamorphic sedimentary rock ; that it belongs to the 
Trias formation, and represents, with the gypseous and saliferous marls, 
the age of the Muschelkalk. 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 oi the mountains which separate 
the Haute-Garonne from the Hautes-Pyrenees, — 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. 
