Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/205

Rh would be simply enormous, unless, indeed, they were of common occurrence. Looking at these remains as at the remains of other mammals, we must admit either that these low characters represent retention of ancestral peculiarities, or that they are cases of reversion. In considering the Neanderthal skull, with its retreating frontal, its enormous frontal crest, and other anthropoid characters, Huxley is led to say that at most there is "demonstrated the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat toward the pithecoid type."

To a mind unbiased by preconceived opinions, and frankly willing to interpret the facts as they stand revealed by the study of these ancient remains the world over, the evidence of man's lowly origin seems, indeed, overwhelming.

Looking at the whole question impartially, we find that among recent men there are high types as well as low types, with a variation so great as to have induced Agassiz, Morton, and others, to consider them specific. And while, as Wyman asserts, no one race possesses all the low characters, yet with the relatively long arms, the tendency of the pelvis to depart from the normal proportion, and numerous other facts of like significance, there are yet retained among some of them more resemblances to the higher apes than can be found among others.

Prof. Cope, not content with tracing man back to some ape-like progenitor, has, in a suggestive way, considered man's relations to the Tertiary mammalia. In a communication to the Association at Detroit, on this subject, he prefaced his paper by saying that in the doctrine of evolution two propositions must be established: 1. That a relation of orderly succession of structure exists, which corresponds with a succession in time; 2. That the terms (species, genera, etc.) of this succession actually display transitions or connections by intermediate forms, whether observed to arise in descent, or to be of such varietal character as to admit of no other explanation of their origin." He shows that the primary forms of mammalia are strongly indicated in the structure of the feet, and also in the character of the teeth. In recent land-mammals there are several types of foot to be recognized, the many-toed plantigrade, the carnivorous, the ox, and the horse types. Among the earlier types of the Eocene, he finds the most generalized type in the Coryphodon of Owen (Bathmodon of Cope). This creature was plantigrade, with a short calcaneum, and an imperfect hinge for the foot. From this generalized form he traces a line of succession of intermediate forms to the horse on the one hand, and the ox on the other.

The Coryphodon was one of the earliest known mammals, while the horse and the ox preceded man by a single geological period. Without entering into a technical description of the successive forms presented by Prof. Cope, we may quote his words wherein he shows