422 
Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinhurgh. [sess. 
On M. Dubois’ Description of remains recently found in 
Java, named by him Pithecanthropus erectus. With 
Remarks on so-called Transitional Forms between 
Apes and Man. By Professor Sir William Turner, 
F.R.S. 
(Read February 4, 1895.) 
Since the time when naturalists were led, by the publication of 
Charles Darwin’s far-famed work on the Origin of Species hy 
Natural Selection^ to consider that Man might have been derived 
through a process of evolution from lower forms of animal life, 
attention has repeatedly been called to remains, more or less 
fossilised, which were thought to be transitional forms between the 
lower animals and Man. 
One of the most remarkable specimens studied from this point 
of view was the well-known Neanderthal skull, discovered in 1857, 
along with some bones of the limbs and ribs, in a limestone cave in 
the Neander Valley. Unfortunately, it consisted only of the 
calvaria or skull-cap, which was characterised by the great promin- 
ence of the glabella and supra-orbital ridges, the flattening of the 
vertex, the slope upwards and forwards of the occipital squama 
from the protuberance of that bone, and the long, straight squamosal 
suture, in all of which it approximated to the configuration of the 
crania of anthropoid apes. On the other hand, its estimated 
capacity of 1230 cubic centimetres and its glabello-occipital length 
of 200 mm. much exceeded the corresponding measurements in 
anthropoid apes, and approximated it to many aboriginal Australian 
crania : whilst, in its breadth of 144 mm., it considerably exceeded 
the transverse diameter of the cranium of the Australian savage. 
Its length-breadth index is 72. By some observers it was regarded 
as transitional between man and apes, and Professor King of Galway 
designated it Homo Neanderthalensis. Professor Huxley made a 
careful analysis of its characters in Man’s Place in Naturef and 
whilst speaking of it as the most pithecoid of human crania up to 
that time discovered, he showed its affinities to the skulls of some 
* London, 1863. Also supplementary paper in Nat. Hist. Rev., July 1864. 
