THE OVARIAN EGG. 269 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE OVARIAN EGG. 



ALL important changes in the social and politi- 

 condition of man, whether brought about by 

 violent convulsions or effected gradually, are at 

 once recognized as eras in the history of human- 

 ity. But on the broad high-road of civilization 

 along which men are ever marching, they pass by 

 unnoticed the landmarks of intellectual progress, 

 unless they chance to have some direct bearing 

 on what is called the practical side of life. Such 

 an era marked the early part of our own century ; 

 and though at the time a thousand events seemed 

 more full-freighted for the world than the dis- 

 covery of some old bones in the quarries of Mont- 

 martre, and though many a man seemed greater 

 in- the estimation of the hour than the professor 

 at the Jardin des Plantes who strove to reconstruct 

 these fragments, yet the story that they told 

 lighted up all the past, and showed its true con- 

 nection with the present. 



Before the year 1800, men had never suspected 

 that their home had been tenanted in past times 



