Page:The Last link.djvu/40

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THE LAST LINK

the deep constriction behind the upper margin of the orbits proved that the skull was that of an ape, as such never occurred in man. It so happened that a few weeks later Professor Nehring of Berlin demonstrated exactly the same formation on a human prehistoric skull received by him from Santos, in Brazil.

Virchow was, in fact, just as unlucky in Leyden in his fight with our pliocene ancestor as he had been unfortunate in his opinion on the famous skulls of Neanderthal, Spy, La Naulette, etc., everyone of which he explained as a pathological abnormality. It would be a very curious coincidence indeed if all these and other fossil human remains were those of idiots or otherwise abnormal individuals, provided they are old and low enough in their organization to be of phylogenetic value to the unbiassed zoologist.

As the sworn adversary of Evolution, transformism, and Darwinism in particular, but a believer in the constancy of species, the