Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/108

90 Professor Huxley's observation regarding the wide range of variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so pure a race as the native Australian, removes to no small extent this supposed anomaly, assuming what though not proved is very probable, that both varieties coexisted in the post-pliocene period in Western Europe.

As to the Engis skull, we must remember that although associated with the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and hyæna, all of extinct species, it nevertheless is also accompanied by a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other quadrupeds of species still living. Indeed many eminent palæontologists, and among them Professor Pictet, think that, numerically considered, the larger portion of the mammalian fauna agrees specifically with that of our own period, so that we are scarcely entitled to feel surprised if we find human races of the post-pliocene epoch undistinguishable from some living ones. It would merely tend to show that man has been as constant in his osteological characters as many other mammalia now his contemporaries. The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of progressive development, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races.

It is now admitted that the differences between the brain of the highest races of man and that of the lowest, though less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate the human from the simian brain; and the same rule holds good in regard to the shape of the skull. The average Negro skull differs from that of the European in having a