In the year 1892 this distinguished geologist made one of the most important contributions to our knowledge of the antiquity of man. In that year he disinterred a large number of vertebrate remains from beds--determined to be of late Pliocene, if not of Miocene age--"of cemented volcanic tuff, consisting of clay, sand, and consolidated lapilli," at Trinil on the slope of the Kendeng Hills in Java. Among these remains were a portion of a cranium, two molar teeth, and a femur, presenting mixed simian and human characters. The dimensions of the skull-cap showed that the internal capacity of the cranium was about 1,000 cubic centimetres, while the largest skulls of the _Simiidæ_ averaged only about 500 centimetres. With the exception of this large capacity, the calvarium presented few characters which were not strongly {262}simian, and of all the apes it most resembled the Gibbons' (_Hylobates_); but it was far superior in its cranial arch--low and depressed as the arch was--to that of any ape. The frontal region was narrow and the supraciliary ridges prominent. The neck area of the occipital bone was also ape-like in form. The thigh-bone (_femur_), on the other hand, presented human characters in a very marked degree, and gave no indication that the individual who owned it was in the habit of sitting on his hams. The molar teeth were likewise more human than ape-like, although they presented many strong simian characters. Dr. Dubois has assigned these remarkable fossils to a species which he has named _Pithecanthropus erectus_ (the Erect Ape-man), as he believes that their owner occupied a place in the genealogical tree below the point of devarication of the anthropoid apes from the human line. Dr. Cunningham, of Dublin, however, who is one of our most eminent anatomists and anthropologists, would place it "on the human line, a short distance above the point at which the anthropoid branch is given off"; for he could "not believe that an ape-form with a cranial capacity of 1,000 centimetres could be the progenitor of the man-like apes, the largest of which had a capacity of only 500. Such a supposition would necessarily involve the assumption that the anthropoid apes were a degenerated branch from the common stem." Altogether, then, a study of these important remains tends to show that _Pithecanthropus_ had the lowest human cranium known, and was the most ape-like ancestor of the human race yet described. He was very nearly as much below the Neanderthal man as he was below the normal European. It should be stated that some doubt has been expressed whether all the remains belong to one and the same species of animal. Dr. Dubois' arguments for their really belonging to the same individual appear, however, very convincing. {263}On page 223, after the close of the first paragraph, insert:--