Page:The American Journal of Science, series 4, volume 4.djvu/249

Rh phological resemblance to that of a young anthropoid is of a nature to explain the divergence of opinions, some of which ascribe it to a monkey, others, to the human species. But as it is a question of an adult, this fact is pronouncedly in favor of ascribing the skull to the human species with the reserve that it occupies a rank morphologically intermediate between anthropoids and the lowest human races. However, an anthropoid maintaining the upright position and possessing such a cranium is nothing less than a low order of human, for it has lost the essential traits which differentiate man from anthropoids. It is understood in this sense that the opinions of Turner and Cunningham do not differ from mine.

The important thing is the establishing of the fact that the craniologic inferiority of fossil human races, according to the specimens we know, increases with their antiquity. The discovery of Mr. Dubois contributes to establish this fact.

Let us represent by a line AD the entire family of Hominidæ, which, for the theory of evolution, includes, in addition to the genus Homo in its known state CD, an unknown fossil portion CA, connecting the known portion with an anthropoid ancestor whatsoever A. When we say that the individual from Trinil belongs to the human species, that signifies that it can enter into the portion CD within the limit L, which, for the anti-evolutionists, the human species must not overlap.

When it is said, on the contrary, that the race of Trinil is inferior to all known human races including the portion C, it is considered thereby even as one of those intermediate races TT' which, according to the theory of evolution, ought to have formed the unknown portion of the line AD.—Whether or not we place this race under the genus Homo (which is of little moment for the evolutionist), we consider it as one of the intermediate fossils theoretically foreseen. To contradict this opinion and to attach the man of Trinil to the race of Spy is to admit that it is a question always of the portion CD representing without theory the species or genus Homo. Such was the former opinion of Turner and of Cunningham; opinion which has been perhaps modified since the direct examination of the specimens under discussion.

According to the contrary opinion, the Pithecanthropus represents one of those fossil human races that the theory fore-