There is one other discovery of a fossil man which comes properly at this point, to cap and confirm what has already been said. Fifteen years ago a skull-top and a thigh-bone were found by Dr. Dubois at Trinil, in the island of Java, at a depth of thirty feet in a sandy deposit, considered by good authority (but not certainly) to be of Pliocene age. From recent reports on the deposit it seems that it may very well be of Pleistocene age. These remains have become celebrated as those of a monkey-like man, and the name Pithecanthropus has been given to the creature to which they belonged. This skull-top (or cranial roof) is now in Utrecht, and is well known (Fig. 78). It indicates a race of men or men-like creatures, with the flatness of skull, receding forehead, and large bony eye-ridges, such as we see in the Neander Men and in some South Australians, but greatly exaggerated. The skull was so low and flat as greatly to resemble that of the Gibbon, though much larger. The volume of the cranial cavity (showing the size of the brain) was about 900 units—far smaller than that of the average Australian—the skull of smallest cavity among living races of men. The volume of the brain-cavity of the largest ape (gorilla) amounts to about 500 units (cubic centimetres); so that, allowing for rare individual fluctuations of as much as one-fourth more or one-fourth less (an amount of variation which, great as it is, is definitely known and recorded in specimens of the skulls of human races), we get the following list of “cranial capacities” or brain-sizes, forming a nearly unbroken series between the highest European and the ape. The middle figure represents the normal or average, and the first and last figure in each group the constant, though rare, minimum and maximum. Gorilla, 350, 500, 650; Java race, 675, 900, 1125; Australians, 900, 1200, 1500; Cromagnard and European, 1165, 1550, 1940 (European skulls of this great capacity are known). The Neander-man skulls are left out of the above list—although the Corrèze specimen allows of a satisfactory measurement of its capacity—for a very curious reason, which is explained in the next chapter. FOOTNOTES [9] In this connection it seems to be important to note the “Ethiopic” character of the arrangement of the hair in the little carving of a woman’s head from the Brassempouy Cave (dep. Landes), shown in Fig. 7. XLIII MORE ABOUT THE NEANDER MEN Since writing what precedes I have been able more than once to gratify my keen desire to examine the wonderful human skull from the Chapelle-aux-Saints in the Corrèze (Central France). The skull has been photographed, and an excellent figure of it is reproduced in our Fig. 65. But it is one thing to look at a picture of such a specimen, and another to take it into one’s hands and closely examine it. The skull is in the care of my friend, Professor Marcelin Boule, who is at the head of the great collection of remains of extinct animals in the Jardin des Plantes.