The history of Quaternary fossil man is divided, in the _Crania Ethnica_ of Quatrefages and Hamy, into four races: 1st, the Canstadt race; 2nd, the Cro-Magnon race; 3rd, the races of Grenelle and Furfooz; 4th, the race of Truchere. The Canstadt race, so called from the first skull of this type, which was discovered in the loess of the valley of the Rhone near Wurtemburg, though it is better known from the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which gave rise to so much discussion, and was pronounced by some that of an idiot, by others the most pithecoid specimen of a human skull yet known, in fact almost the long-sought-for missing link. A still later discovery, however, has set at rest all doubt as to the reality of this Neanderthal type, and of its being the oldest Quaternary human type known in Western Europe. In the year 1886 two Belgian savants, Messrs. Fraissent and Lohest, one an anatomist, the other a geologist, discovered in a cave at Spy near Namur two skeletons with the skulls complete, which presented the Neanderthal type in an exaggerated form. They were found under circumstances which leave no doubt as to their belonging to the earliest Quaternary deposit, being at the bottom of the cave, in the lowest of three distinct strata, the two uppermost of which were full of the usual palæolithic implements of stone and bone, while the few found in the lowest stratum with the skeletons were of the rudest description. Huxley pronounces the evidence such as will bear the severest criticism, and he sums up the anatomical characters of the skeletons in the following terms-- "They were short of stature, but powerfully built, with strong, curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees. Their long depressed skulls had very strong brow-ridges, their lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from the teeth downwards and backwards, in consequence of the absence of that especially characteristic feature of the higher type of man, the chin prominence." M. Fraissent says, "We consider ourselves in a position to say that, having regard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of Spy, he possessed a greater number of pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind." And again he says-- "The distance which separates the man of Spy from the modern anthropoid ape is undoubtedly enormous; but we must be permitted to point out that if the man of the Quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way. From the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of man and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the Eocene and even beyond."