Page:The American Journal of Science, series 4, volume 4.djvu/240

216 ing. There, the femur was declared human and the skull attributed more or less affirmatively to an anthropoid.

On the other hand, Cunningham at Dublin and Sir W. Turner at Edinburgh pronounced both skull and femur human; Rudolph Martin of the Zürich Univerity was of the same mind.

Such a divergence of opinions expressed by these anatomists, all of them so competent, would almost suffice to demonstrate the really intermediate state of the skull from Java, for it is well known how great the difference is between a human skull and that of a monkey. To give occasion for opinions so opposed, it was necessary that the skull from Java should present important characters human and important characters simian.

That which explains also the divergence in question, is that the human skull drops now and then to a simian level among the microcephalous of all races, and to a level approaching the Pithecanthropus among certain inferior individuals, especially in the lowest savage races.

The skull from Java is no less remarkable in its general form than in its weak capacity. Its entire median curve is extremely elliptic; the forehead is extremely narrow and tapering. The lower portion of the frontal bone above the orbits forms a sort of visor of which the relative prominence surpasses all known proportions in the human species, not excepting, even, the famous Neanderthal skull. The lateral projection of this visor is not less extraordinary and denotes a great depth of the temporal fosses. The frontal region presents a