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After writing a book to establish the descent of man from apes, Professor Huxley is obliged to confess that "the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is."

Some of these believe themselves sprung from trees, as if they had still reminiscences of the arboreal habits of a pithecoid ancestry.

Nowadays Sir William is generally remembered, when he is, because he happened to be Oscar's father, or because he was, as an outraged Victorian put it, a "pithecoid person of extraordinary sensuality."

But no amount of such suppositions or imaginations will furnish Science with the scantiest apology for a foothold, nor can the germs of language attributed to pithecoid communities or the sagest of their patriarchs, be considered as of any greater value than the speeches put into the mouths of the animals by �sop or "Uncle Remus."

He energetically rejected all attempts to find “pithecoid” characters in the prehistoric remains of man.