hundred years, the total number of a man's progenitors amounts to more than a million millions!" A study of family genealogy would show many curious particulars of human hybridity. We have only to look at the faces which meet us every day in the street to see the features of the four dominant classes which in turn governed England, still strongly marked in the appearance of their descendants, though now united into one people, with the same general characteristics. How often do we talk of family likeness, and yet how little do we know or care about its causes. We speak of certain peculiarities "running in families," as the colour of the hair, the size of the hands, tallness or shortness, big noses or little noses, or gout, or scrofula, but how these differences. are caused we are almost always unable to explain. That they do exist, and do descend from one generation to another is a fact which I do not suppose anyone is bold enough, or rather foolish enough, to deny. We see the same in the brute creation. We preserve the pedigrees of our racehorses; for it is only by careful breeding, and more or less freedom from toil, that they become superior to the carthorse. The Roman poet not only recognised family characteristics in man, but speaks of them as common to the brutes : Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis: Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum But the problem for us to solve is how these differences arise, and what changes they work in successive generations. And this, so far as human reason will permit us to find out, is to be ascertained through the labours of the genealogist. To see the peculiarities of different families is easy; but in order to learn how they acquired those peculiarities, we must endeavour to ascertain their common progenitors. I am quite aware that it is impossible to substantiate any pedigree by legal proof for more than a few hundred years; yet, perhaps, more might be learnt from one such a descent than from studying the general appearance of many persons whose relationship cannot be ascertained. * Horace, lib. iv, ode 4. On the one hand, our information is certain and definite; on the other, we can only judge from probabilities. The advantage of genealogy is that it is certain and definite, it is only when facts fail us that we should have recourse to probability or tradition. It is fact that gives rise to probability, and invests tradition with the character of truth. Great importance has been attached to, and great use made of, the returns of births, deaths, marriages, and population; it is from them we learn the average duration of life; but our conclusions only approximate towards truth. Would not a more extended knowledge of family genealogies aid us in making a still nearer approximation? To trace the descent of any family which has not held land, is now very difficult, and frequently impossible; but with our present system of registration such difficulties annually diminish, and I apprehend that, in two or three hundred years to come, our successors will be able to ascertain their pedigrees with comparatively little difficulty. It may reasonably be said, what good will a bare pedigree do the anthropologist? I answer, none. But if the ages, causes of death, circumstances of life, etc., of the persons recorded are ascertainable, which to a certain extent they will be, then I answer, that such descents will be of the greatest use to the student of man. Genealogy helps us to investigate the laws relating to our physical nature,-to find out why one race deteriorates while another flourishes. We were told by our President in his introductory address, that "there is no science which is destined to confer more practical good on humanity at large, than the one which specially investigates the laws relating to our physical nature." In this investigation we cannot do without genealogy. I have endeavoured very briefly to point out its value to the anthropologist. If I have shown that it is not so dry and unprofitable a study as is generally thought, I have fully attained my object. I believe that the greatest benefit to be derived from the study of genealogy, or more properly speaking, family history, is the moral and not the scientific one, the art of learning, not how we came to live, but how we ought to live. As far as genealogy is connected with anthropology, I should define it as "the science of investigating the causes which lead to the intellectual and physical development of man, or contribute to his decline, so far as he is influenced by the condition of his progenitors." Viewed in this light, it seems to me to be a study of great importance to the anthropologist. VIII.-On Certain "Simious" Skulls, with especial reference to a Skull from Louth, in Ireland. By C. CARTER BLAKE, F.A.S.L., F.G.S., Curator, Librarian, and Assistant-Secretary of the Anthropological Society of London, and Foreign Associate of the Anthropological Societies of Paris and Spain. THE skull now exhibited is the property of the Anthropological Society of London. It was presented to their museum by Capt. Montgomery Moore, who obtained it from Louth Abbey, in Ireland. Nothing more is known of its history. The attention which has been drawn, during the last few years, to the celebrated skull from the Neanderthal in Germany, has rendered any skull which at all resembles it, in its most striking aspects, of peculiar interest. I need scarcely recapitulate what the distinctive characters of the Neanderthal skull were said to be, as its ponderous brow-ridges, and the peculiar character afforded by its sutures, are familiar to all who have read Dr. Barnard Davis's excellent paper on it.* It was, I believe, left to M. Pruner-Beyt to be the first who pointed out the close resemblance between the skull from the Neanderthal and those of existing Irishmen. The arguments brought forward by him are so fresh in our memory that I need only refer to them here. Prof. William King, of Galway, in his comparison of the Neanderthal skull with the more normal examples of human crania, refers frequently to a skull from Corcomroo Abbey, county Clare, Ireland, which, from his description, appears to present some points of affinity with the skull from Louth now exhibited. I have said that M. Pruner-Bey, in his arguments for the Celtic character of the Neanderthal skull, rests much of his case on the extreme proportions of dolichocephaly exhibited by it (Cran. Index, 72). This dolichocephaly he considers to * Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. i, p. 281. |