1893-94.] Dr Manro on Rise and Progress of Anthropology. 225 
minor links would have dropped out altogether in passing to higher 
results. Nature’s operations are full of short cuts. As a parallel 
case, let me cite the instinct which makes a bee fix on a hexagonal 
cell, or which leads a bird to migrate in winter, both of which must 
be regarded as originally acquired through the ordinary means of 
natural selection, but which ultimately have become transmitted 
directly through heredity, altogether independent of their earlier 
evolutionary stages. 
Another fertile source of arguments in support of the theory of 
man’s descent from the lower animals is to be found in the rudi- 
mentary organs described by anatomists as normally present, or 
occasionally to be met with, in Man. Such organs as canine teeth, 
the coccyx, the inter- and supra-condyloid foramina of the humerus, 
the appendix vermiformis, remnants of some muscles, &c., &c., are 
apparently useless in the human economy, but their homologues 
in other animals have special functions assigned to them. But, 
indeed, the homological structure of the entire human body is 
utterly inexplicable on any other hypothesis. 
“ Thus we can understand,” to quote Darwin’s words once more, 
“ how it has come to pass that man and all other vertebrate animals 
have been constructed on the same general model, why they pass 
through the same early stages of development, and why they retain 
certain rudiments in common. Consequently, we ought frankly to 
admit their community of descent ; to take any other view is to 
admit that our own structure, and that of all the animals around us, 
is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment It is only 
our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers 
declare that they were descended from demigods, which leads us to 
demur to this conclusion. But the time will before long come 
when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists, who were well 
acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man 
and other animals, should have believed that each was the work of 
a separate act of creation .” — {Descent of Man, p. 25.) 
(4) Fossil Man . — The difficulty of assigning a definite age to the 
osseous remains of ancient Man which have hitherto come to light, 
owing partly to their fragmentary condition, and partly to imper- 
fect observations as to their exact strati graphical position, gives to 
this class of evidence a tinge of uncertainty. Hence such materials 
VOL. XX. 2f)/5/94 p 
