1903 - 4 .] Dr Munro on Man in the Palaeolithic Period. 119 
personal protection of some kind. Our knowledge of their 
physique and general appearance is, as already mentioned, 
mainly derived from a comparison of a few of their fossil 
skeletons with those of modern civilised races. On this phase 
of the subject we have a considerable amount of evidence to 
show that since man parted company with the lower animals, 
there has been a gradual expansion of the cranium, corresponding 
to an enlargement of certain portions of the organ of thought. 
All such materials have, however, to he carefully sifted and 
scrutinised before being admitted as valid assets in a scientific 
inquiry ; and even then, this kind of evidence seldom amounts to 
more than probability without being corroborated by other dis- 
coveries. The subject has grown so much of late that it was 
impossible in the limits at my disposal to do more than give a 
few pertinent examples. The race represented by the skulls of 
Neanderthal and Spy was long anterior to the time of the Palaeo- 
lithic hunters of the reindeer period, who so greatly distinguished 
themselves as artists ; and as to the J ava skull and femur, they 
are probably the oldest osseous relics of man yet known. The 
human remains found in the rock-shelter of Cro-Magnon have been 
for a long time regarded as belonging to, and typical of, the latest 
Palaeolithic people ; hut as they were merely lying over the culture- 
debris , they are regarded by some archaeologists as burials of a 
more recent date. The fact that the last molars were smaller 
than the others gives additional support to this view. It does 
not, however, appear to me that this point is of much conse- 
quence, as the amount of superincumbent talus under w T hich the 
skeletons lay shows that they could not he later than the transition 
period. Moreover, there are other human remains with regard to 
which no such doubts have been raised, as, for example, the well- 
known skulls of Chancelade and Laugerie Basse, both found in the 
Dordogne district, which show equally advanced cranial characters. 
The recent discovery of two skeletons, which Dr Yerneau, of 
Paris, describes as belonging to a new race intermediate between 
the Neanderthaloid and Cro-Magnon races, marks an important 
addition to fossil craniology. From the preliminary facts already 
published, and from what Dr Yerneau has told me, anthropologists 
may look forward with high expectation to the full report of these 
