gists." Professor Owen's examination however of the plates figured in M. Lartet's memoir[1] has led him to a very different conclusion.
Stress has been laid upon the inferior size of the canine in Dryopithecus, compared with the Chimpanzees, Gorillas, and Orangs, as indicating its affinity to man; but the inferior monkeys also often exhibit this character, and "it is by no means to be trusted as significant of true affinity, even supposing the sex of the fossil to be known as being male."[2]
The characters in which Dryopitliecus approaches to the lower form Hylobates are,—the cylindric form of the humerus; the verticality of the forepart of the jaw; the shape of the forepart of the coronoid process, slightly convex forwards, causing the angle which it forms with the alveolar border to be less open than in Man, the Gorilla, and Chimpanzee, and the mode in which the molar teeth are developed. Professor Owen sums up by stating,—"There is no law of correlation, by which, from the portion of jaw with teeth of the Dryopithecus, can be deduced the shape of the nasal bones and orbits, the position and plane of the occipital foramen, the presence of mastoid and vaginal processes, or any other cranial characters determinative of affinity to Man; much less any ground for inferring the proportions of the upper to the lower limbs, of the humerus to the ulna, of the pollux to the manus, or the shape and development of the iliac bones. All those characters which do determine the closer resemblance and affinity of the genus Troglodytes to Man, and of the genus Hylobates to the tailed monkeys, are at present unknown in respect of the Dryopithecus."
As regards Pliopithecus, no doubts can exist as to its affinity with Hylobates.
We have thus amongst the fossil species of Simiadæ no form sufficiently allied to Man to have served as his ancestor; no form which approaches so near to him as the Gorilla or Chimpanzee.
The theory which would identify man as the descendant of any of these existing species has been often and satisfactorily disproved.
The analogy of the genesis of the whole human race to the genesis of each particular individual is obvious. Knowledge is denied to each of us how we came, from what we came, whence we came, whither we go. The feeble and obscure light of analogy seems to indicate an origin analogous to that of all animals—the cell. Through
