516 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Passing' over that important feature, the naked skin, to which the 
author does not seem to think it necessary to refer, but which has done at 
least as much as his speech to bring into play his highest intellectual 
faculties, we now inquire what he has to say in regard to the extent of the 
difference in the capacity of the brain-cases. 
“ The lowest man’s skull has twice the capacity of that of the highest 
gorilla.”" This, he tells us, loses much of its systematic value when 
viewed by the light of certain other facts ; but as we are not presuming to 
decide between Professor Owen and our author concerning the classificatory 
value of certain features, this supplement does not affect our inquiry ; and 
we now proceed to seek information concerning the contents of the brain- 
cases — the human and simian brains ; and we find that “ it may be safely 
said that an average European child of four years old has a brain twice as 
large as that of an adult gorilla.” 
Coupled with the psychical differences between the two, this is rather 
adverse to the transmutation theory. But we must not be hasty in 
our conclusions ; and passing over many such trilling distinctions as a 
tooth, “ which projeefs like a tusk,” we will try to find a brief general 
conclusion as to the differences between Homo and Troglodytes. And this 
is frankly and clearly given — in self-defence, by the way, — for the author 
tells us that “those who endeavour to teach what nature so clearly shows 
us in the matter are liable to have their opinions misrepresented and their 
phraseology garbled, until they seem to say that the structural differences 
between man and even the highest apes are small and insignificant.” 
No one can, however, thus misrepresent the author in this instance 
who says that “ every bone of the gorilla bears marks by' which it might be 
distinguished from a corresponding bone in man ; and that in the present 
creation, at any rate, no intermediate link bridges over the gap between 
Homo and Troglodytes. 
We place the utmost reliance upon Professor Huxley’s testimony, for, 
as every one knows, he is a careful and conscientious observer and a com- 
parative anatomist of the highest order. But this testimony compels us 
to ask : If the differences between them be so vast, and there is no 
intermediate link in the present creation, upon what does he base his 
belief in man’s simian descent — Is the link to be found in the records of 
the past ? And at the conclusion of his volume we find an explicit reply' 
to our inquiry. It is “ that the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered 
do not seem to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by 
the modification of which he has probably become what he is;”J and if 
such a link exists, he intimates that it will probably have to be revealed 
by some “ unborn palaeontologist.” 
In this work, then, the evidences of the “probable” modification of 
man from the ape would appear to be that the structural differences 
between the two are enormously great, and that neither in the present 
creation, nor in the records of the past, do we find a link which brings the 
Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, p. 77. 
t Ibid. p. 104. % Ibid, p, 159, 
