Chapter 28

As the essay in which this passage stands had no less ambitious an aim than the remodelling of the classification of the Mammalia, its author might be supposed to have written under a sense of peculiar responsibility, and to have tested, with especial care, the statements he ventured to promulgate. And even if this be expecting too much, hastiness, or want of opportunity for due deliberation, cannot now be pleaded in extenuation of any shortcomings; for the propositions cited were repeated two years afterwards in the Reade Lecture, delivered before so grave a body as the University of Cambridge, in 1859.

When the assertions, which I have italicised in the above extract, first came under my notice, I was not a little astonished at so flat a contradiction of the doctrines current among well-indormed anatomists; but, not unnaturally imagining that the deliberate statements of a responsible person must have some foundation in fact, I deemed it my duty to investigate the subject anew before the time at which it would be my business to lecture thereupon came round. The result of my inquiries was to prove that Mr. Owen's three assertions, that "the third lobe, the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor," are "peculiar to the genus 'Homo'," are contrary to the plainest facts. I communicated this conclusion to the students of my class; and then, having no desire to embark in a controversy which could not redound to the honour of British science, whatever its issue, I turned to more congenial occupations.

The time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with truth.

At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, in 1860, Professor Owen repeated these assertions in my presence, and, of course, I immediately gave them a direct and unqualified contradiction, pledging myself to justify that unusual procedure elsewhere. I redeemed that pledge by publishing, in the January number of the 'Natural History Review' for 1861, an article wherein the truth of the three following propositions was fully demonstrated (l. c. p. 71):--

"1. That the third lobe is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, seeing that it exists in all the higher quadrumana."

"2. That the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, inasmuch as it also exists in the higher quadrumana."

"3. That the 'hippocampus minor' is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, as it is found in certain of the higher quadrumana."

Furthermore, this paper contains the following paragraph (p. 76):

"And lastly, Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik (op. cit. p. 271), though they particularly note that 'the lateral ventricle is distinguished from that of Man by the very defective proportions of the posterior cornu, wherein only a stripe is visible as an indication of the hippocampus minor;' yet the Figure 4, in their second Plate, shows that this posterior cornu is a perfectly distinct and unmistakeable structure, quite as large as it often is in Man. It is the more remarkable that Professor Owen should have overlooked the explicit statement and figure of these authors, as it is quite obvious, on comparison of the figures, that his woodcut of the brain of a Chimpanzee (l. c. p. 19) is a reduced copy of the second figure of Messrs. Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik's first Plate.

"As M. Gratiolet (l. c. p. 18), however is careful to remark, 'unfortunately the brain which they have taken as a model was greatly altered (profondement affaisse), whence the general form of the brain is given in these plates in a manner which is altogether incorrect.' Indeed, it is perfectly obvious, from a comparison of a section of the skull of the Chimpanzee with these figures, that such is the case; and it is greatly to be regretted that so inadequate a figure should have been taken as a typical representation of the Chimpanzee's brain."

From this time forth, the untenability of his position might have been as apparent to Professor Owen as it was to every one else; but, so far from retracting the grave errors into which he had fallen, Professor Owen has persisted in and reiterated them; first, in a lecture delivered before the Royal Institution on the 19th of March, 1861, which is admitted to have been accurately reproduced in the 'Athenaeum' for the 23rd of the same month, in a letter addressed by Professor Owen to that journal on the 30th of March. The 'Athenaeum report was accompanied by a diagram purporting to represent a Gorilla's brain, but in reality so extraordinary a misrepresentation, that Professor Owen substantially, though not explicitly, withdraws it in the letter in question. In amending this error, however, Professor Owen fell into another of much graver import, as his communication concludes with the following paragraph: "For the true proportion in which the cerebrum covers the cerebellum in the highest Apes, reference should be made to the figure of the undissected brain of the Chimpanzee in my 'Reade's Lecture on the Classification, etc., of the Mammalia', p. 25, Figure 7, 8 vo. 1859."

It would not be credible, if it were not unfortunately true, that this figure, to which the trusting public is referred, without a word of qualification, "for the true proportion in which the cerebrum covers the cerebellum in the highest Apes," is exactly that unacknowledged copy of Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik's figure whose utter inaccuracy had been pointed out years before by Gratiolet, and had been brought to Professor Owen's knowledge by myself in the passage of my article in the 'Natural History Review' above quoted.

I drew public attention to this circumstance again in my reply to Professor Owen, published in the 'Athenaeum' for April 13th, 1861; but the exploded figure was reproduced once more by Professor Owen, without the slightest allusion to its inaccuracy, in the 'Annals of Natural History' for June 1861!

This proved too much for the patience of the original authors of the figure, Messrs. Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, who, in a note addressed to the Academy of Amsterdam, of which they were members, declared themselves to be, though decided opponents of all forms of the doctrine of progressive development, above all things, lovers of truth: and that, therefore, at whatever risk of seeming to lend support to views which they disliked, they felt it their duty to take the first opportunity of publicly repudiating Professor Owen's misuse of their authority.

In this note they frankly admitted the justice of the criticisms of M. Gratiolet, quoted above, and they illustrated, by new and careful figures, the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor of the Orang. Furthermore, having demonstrated the parts, at one of the sittings of the Academy, they add, "la presence des parties contestees y a ete universellement reconnue par les anatomistes presents a la seance. Le seul doute qui soit reste se rapporte au pes Hippocampi minor...A l'etat frais l'indice du petit pied d'Hippocampe etait plus prononce que maintenant."

Professor Owen repeated his erroneous assertions at the meeting of the British Association in 1861, and again, without any obvious necessity, and without adducing a single new fact or new argument, or being able in any way to meet the crushing evidence from original dissections of numerous Apes' brains, which had in the meanwhile been brought forward by Prof. Rolleston,* ([Footnote] *On the Affinities of the Brain of the Orang. 'Nat. Hist. Review', April, 1861.) F.R.S., Mr. Marshall,* ([Footnote] *On the Brain of a young Chimpanzee. 'Ibid.', July, 1861.) F.R.S., Mr. Flower,* ([Footnote] *On the Posterior lobes of the Cerebrum of the Quadrumana. 'Philosophical Transactions', 1862.) Mr. Turner,* ([Footnote] *On the anatomical Relations of the Surfaces of the Tentorium to the Cerebrum and Cerebellum in Man and the lower Mammals. 'Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh', March, 1862.) and myself,* ([Footnote] *On the Brain of Ateles. 'Proceedings of Zoological Society', 1861.) revived the subject at the Cambridge meeting of the same body in 1862. Not content with the tolerably vigorous repudiation which these unprecedented proceedings met with in Section D, Professor Owen sanctioned the publication of a version of his own statements, accompanied by a strange misrepresentation of mine (as may be seen by comparison of the 'Times' report of the discussion), in the 'Medical Times' for October 11th, 1862. I subjoin the conclusion of my reply in the same journal for October 25th.

"If this were a question of opinion, or a question of interpretation of parts or of terms,--were it even a question of observation in which the testimony of my own senses alone was pitted against that of another person, I should adopt a very different tone in discussing this matter. I should, in all humility, admit the likelihood of having myself erred in judgment, failed in knowledge, or been blinded by prejudice.

"But no one pretends now, that the controversy is one of the terms or of opinions. Novel and devoid of authority as some of Professor Owen's proposed definitions may have been, they might be accepted without changing the great features of the case. Hence though special investigations into these matters have been undertaken during the last two years by Dr. Allen Thomson, by Dr. Rolleston, by Mr. Marshall, and by Mr. Flower, all, as you are aware, anatomists of repute in this country, and by Professors Schroeder Van der Kolk, and Vrolik (whom Professor Owen incautiously tried to press into his own service) on the Continent, all these able and conscientious observers have with one accord testified to the accuracy of my statements, and to the utter baselessness of the assertions of Professor Owen. Even the venerable Rudolph Wagner, whom no man will accuse of progressionist proclivities, has raised his voice on the same side; while not a single anatomist, great or small, has supported Professor Owen.

"Now, I do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but I do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions. Yet during the two years through which this preposterous controversy has dragged its weary length, Professor Owen has not ventured to bring forward a single preparation in support of his often-repeated assertions.

"The case stands thus, therefore:--Not only are the statements made by me in consonance with the doctrines of the best older authorities, and with those of all recent investigators, but I am quite ready to demonstrate them on the first monkey that comes to hand; while Professor Owen's assertions are not only in diametrical opposition to both old and new authorities, but he has not produced, and, I will add, cannot produce, a single preparation which justifies them."

I now leave this subject, for the present.--For the credit of my calling I should be glad to be, hereafter, for ever silent upon it. But, unfortunately, this is a matter upon which, after all that has occurred, no mistake or confusion of terms is possible--and in affirming that the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor exist in certain Apes, I am stating either that which is true, or that which I must know to be false. The question has thus become one of personal veracity. For myself, I will accept no other issue than this, grave as it is, to the present controversy.

End of On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals.

ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN.

I have endeavoured to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ANTHROPINI, or Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates, between which and the immediately following Family, the CATARHINI, there is, in the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or connecting link, as between the CATARHINI and PLATYRHINI.

It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural intervals between the various existing modifications of organic beings may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long and varied succession of animals and plants which have preceded those now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized remains. How far this doctrine is well based, how far, on the other hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it is an overstatement of the real facts of the case, and an exaggeration of the conclusions fairly deducible from them, are points of grave importance, but into the discussion of which I do not, at present, propose to enter. It is enough that such a view of the relations of extinct to living beings has been propounded, to lead us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent discoveries of human remains in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view.

I shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those fragmentary Human skulls from the caves of Engis in the valley of the Meuse, in Belgium, and of the Neanderthal near Dusseldorf, the geological relations of which have been examined with so much care by Sir Charles Lyell; upon whose high authority I shall take it for granted, that the Engis skull belonged to a contemporary of the Mammoth ('Elephas primigenius') and of the woolly Rhinoceros ('Rhinoceros tichorhinus'), with the bones of which it was found associated; and that the Neanderthal skull is of great, though uncertain, antiquity. Whatever be the geological age of the latter skull, I conceive it is quite safe (on the ordinary principles of paleontological reasoning) to assume that the former takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague biological limit, which separates the present geological epoch from that which immediately preceded it. And there can be no doubt that the physical geography of Europe has changed wonderfully, since the bones of Men and Mammoths, Hyaenas and Rhinoceroses were washed pell-mell into the cave of Engis.

The skull from the cave of Engis was originally discovered by Professor Schmerling, and was described by him, together with other human remains disinterred at the same time, in his valuable work, 'Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la Province de Liege', published in 1833 (p. 59, et seq.), from which the following paragraphs are extracted, the precise expressions of the author being, as far as possible, preserved.

"In the first place, I must remark that these human remains, which are in my possession, are characterized like thousands of bones which I have lately been disinterring, by the extent of the decomposition which they have undergone, which is precisely the same as that of the extinct species: all, with a few exceptions, are broken; some few are rounded, as is frequently found to be the case in fossil remains of other species. The fractures are vertical or oblique; none of them are eroded; their colour does not differ from that of other fossil bones, and varies from whitish yellow to blackish. All are lighter than recent bones, with the exception of those which have a calcareous incrustation, and the cavities of which are filled with such matter.

"The cranium which I have caused to be figured, Plate I., Figs. 1, 2, is that of an old person. The sutures are beginning to be effaced: all the facial bones are wanting, and of the temporal bones only a fragment of that of the right side is preserved.

"The face and the base of the cranium had been detached before the skull was deposited in the cave, for we were unable to find those parts, though the whole cavern was regularly searched. The cranium was met with at a depth of a metre and a half (five feet nearly), hidden under an osseous breccia, composed of the remains of small animals, and containing one rhinoceros tusk, with several teeth of horses and of ruminants. This breccia, which has been spoken of above (p. 30), was a metre (3 1/4 feet about) wide, and rose to the height of a metre and a half above the floor of the cavern, to the walls of which it adhered strongly.

"The earth which contained this human skull exhibited no trace of disturbance: teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyaena, and bear, surrounded it on all sides.

(FIGURE 22.--The skull from the cave of Engis--viewed from the right side. 'a' glabella, 'b' occipital protuberance, ('a' to 'b' glabello-occipital line), 'c' auditory foramen.)

"The famous Blumenbach* has directed attention to the differences presented by the form and the dimensions of human crania of different races. This important work would have assisted us greatly, if the face, a part essential for the determination of race, with more or less accuracy, had not been wanting in our fossil cranium.

([Footnote] *Decas Collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustrata. Gottingae, 1790-1820.

"We are convinced that even if the skull had been complete, it would not have been possible to pronounce, with certainty, upon a single specimen; for individual variations are so numerous in the crania of one and the same race, that one cannot, without laying oneself open to large chances of error, draw any inference from a single fragment of a cranium to the general form of the head to which it belonged.

"Nevertheless, in order to neglect no point respecting the form of this fossil skull, we may observe that, from the first, the elongated and narrow form of the forehead attracted our attention.

"In fact, the slight elevation of the frontal, its narrowness, and the form of the orbit, approximate it more nearly to the cranium of an Ethiopian than to that of an European: the elongated form and the produced occiput are also characters which we believe to be observable in our fossil cranium; but to remove all doubt upon that subject I have caused the contours of the cranium of an European and of an Ethiopian to be drawn and the foreheads represented. Plate II., Figs. 1 and 2, and, in the same plate, Figs. 3 and 4, will render the differences easily distinguishable; and a single glance at the figures will be more instructive than a long and wearisome description.

"At whatever conclusion we may arrive as to the origin of the man from whence this fossil skull proceeded, we may express an opinion without exposing ourselves to a fruitless controversy. Each may adopt the hypothesis which seems to him most probable: for my own part, I hold it to be demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilization: a deduction which is borne out by contrasting the capacity of the frontal with that of the occipital region.

"Another cranium of a young individual was discovered in the floor of the cavern beside the tooth of an elephant; the skull was entire when found, but the moment it was lifted it fell into pieces, which I have not, as yet, been able to put together again. But I have represented the bones of the upper jaw, Plate I., Figure 5. The state of the alveoli and the teeth, shows that the molars had not yet pierced the gum. Detached milk molars and some fragments of a human skull proceed from this same place. The Figure 3 represents a human superior incisor tooth, the size of which is truly remarkable.* ([Footnote] *In a subsequent passage, Schmerling remarks upon the occurrence of an incisor tooth 'of enormous size' from the caverns of Engihoul. The tooth figured is somewhat long, but its dimensions do not appear to me to be otherwise remarkable.)

"Figure 4 is a fragment of a superior maxillary bone, the molar teeth of which are worn down to the roots.

"I possess two vertebrae, a first and last dorsal.

"A clavicle of the left side (see Plate III., Figure 1); although it belonged to a young individual, this bone shows that he must have been of great stature.* ([Footnote] *The figure of this clavicle measures 5 inches from end to end in a straight line--so that the bone is rather a small than a large one.)

"Two fragments of the radius, badly preserved, do not indicate that the height of the man, to whom they belonged, exceeded five feet and a half.

"As to the remains of the upper extremities, those which are in my possession consist merely of a fragment of an ulna and of a radius (Plate III., Figs. 5 and 6).

"Figure 2, Plate IV., represents a metacarpal bone, contained in the breccia, of which we have spoken; it was found in the lower part above the cranium: add to this some metacarpal bones, found at very different distances, half-a-dozen metatarsals, three phalanges of the hand, and one of the foot.

"This is a brief enumeration of the remains of human bones collected in the cavern of Engis, which has preserved for us the remains of three individuals, surrounded by those of the Elephant, of the Rhinoceros, and of Carnivora of species unknown in the present creation."

From the cave of Engihoul, opposite that of Engis, on the right bank of the Meuse, Schmerling obtained the remains of three other individuals of Man, among which were only two fragments of parietal bones, but many bones of the extremities. In one case a broken fragment of an ulna was soldered to a like fragment of a radius by stalagmite, a condition frequently observed among the bones of the Cave Bear ('Ursus spelaeus'), found in the Belgian caverns.

It was in the cavern of Engis that Professor Schmerling found, incrusted with stalagmite and joined to a stone, the pointed bone implement, which he has figured in Figure 7 of his Plate XXXVI., and worked flints were found by him in all those Belgian caves, which contained an abundance of fossil bones.

A short letter from M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, published in the 'Comptes Rendus' of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, for July 2nd, 1838, speaks of a visit (and apparently a very hasty one) paid to the collection of Professor 'Schermidt' (which is presumably a misprint for Schmerling) at Liege. The writer briefly criticises the drawings which illustrate Schmerling's work, and affirms that the "human cranium is a little longer than it is represented" in Schmerling's figure. The only other remark worth quoting is this:--"The aspect of the human bones differs little from that of the cave bones, with which we are familiar, and of which there is a considerable collection in the same place. With respect to their special forms, compared with those of the varieties of recent human crania, few 'certain' conclusions can be put forward; for much greater differences exist between the different specimens of well-characterized varieties, than between the fossil cranium of Liege and that of one of those varieties selected as a term of comparison."

Geoffroy St. Hilaire's remarks are, it will be observed, little but an echo of the philosophic doubts of the describer and discoverer of the remains. As to the critique upon Schmerling's figures, I find that the side view given by the latter is really about 3/10ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front view is diminished to about the same extent. Otherwise the representation is not, in any way, inaccurate, but corresponds very well with the cast which is in my possession.

A piece of the occipital bone, which Schmerling seems to have missed, has since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by an accomplished anatomist, Dr. Spring, of Liege, under whose direction an excellent plaster cast was made for Sir Charles Lyell. It is upon and from a duplicate of that cast that my own observations and the accompanying figures, the outlines of which are copied from very accurate Camera lucida drawings, by my friend Mr. Busk, reduced to one-half of the natural size, are made.